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CATECHISM 

OF 

KARL MARX'S 

CAPITAL" 

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"A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF 
CAPITALIST PRODUCTION" 



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By LEWIS CASS FRY 



OCT ; I9ltt 



Published by ECONOMIC PUBLISHING COMPANY 
106 N. 4th Street, St. Louis, Mo. 

Copyright 1905, by LEWIS CASS FRY. 



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To The Reader. 

You have before you the study of a science. 

It is not the form, nor the sound, of words that will enable 
you to understand it, but a realization of their meaning. 

This work is constructed from a very extensive vocabulary 
and will necessitate the frequent use of a good dictionary. (Never 
use a pocket edition) . You should never pass a word without finding 
its meaning and importance. 

This work is not intended to take the place of "Capital," but 
if conscientiously studied will enable you to comprehend the princi- 
ples enunciated therein. 

The first part of "Capital" is given, almost verbatim, each 
proposition standing alone; you cannot miss a single proposition, and 
the question will cause you to think the answer. 

There are but digests to the second and third parts, they are 
to show you what to look for. 

After reading this book you should fully comprehend what a 
commodity consists in (exchange) . 

The import and meaning of value, and magnitude of value, 
money and the different functions of money, capital and the process 
of creating it, and above all you should have formed the habit of 
thinking. 

If you have gained all this you will find great pleasure as well 
as great profit in reading "Capital," and there will be no difficulty 
in comprehending it. 

Author. 



PREFACE. 

This great work ("Capital") of Karl Marx has been before 
the public over forty years. 

Its readers has mostly been scientists. And in all these years 
no scientist has been able to give it an adverse criticism. The sub- 
ject matter is of vital importance to the general public. 

Some may wonder, then, why is this work not read by the 
general public? 

It is not strange if you take into consideration these facts. 

Marx spent forty laborious years in gathering facts, he had 
read every author of note on political economy, from Aristotle to 
Herbert Spencer. 

He was well versed in the philosophy of thinking and employed 
both the inductive and deductive methods. 

He introduced the facts, classified them, according to their 
relations and significance, and the sequences of these facts were 
the premises from which he made deductions to explain individual 
cases. 

Being of a scientific frame of mind he thought consecutively 
for long periods of time. 

Hence the paragraphs are so long that only the best trained 
minds can hold a complete paragraph in consciousness, and, unless 
this is done the thought is not comprehended. 

The work was thought out and published in German, and, 
although translated into English, it is still idiomatically German. 

Recognizing the importance to the public weal of a clear under- 
standing of economic problems, I concluded that the best service I 
could render to society was to present the contents of "Capital" to 
the public in such a manner as would be comprehensible to the most 
sluggish mind. 

Everywhere the cry was: "The work of Marx is so scien- 
tifically written that the average man cannot understand it, and, as 
to the working class they never will be able to comprehend it." I 
was confronted, not only with this discouragement, but with these 
stubborn facts: The average man does not think consecutive_for 
more than ninety seconds at one time. 

His thoughts are mostly swayed by instincts stronger than 
his reasoning powers. 



His mind is not trained to think methodically. 

He seldom, if ever, thinks at all. 

He is mentally lazy. 

The problem, of how to present the product of the greatest 
intellect, to the most sluggish mind, in such a manner as it would 
be understood, was what I had to solve. 

After six years' study of the individual, the class, and of the 
general psychology of man, I present my efforts to the public, 
believing that I have, in a measure at least, solved the problem. 

I force attention by a question, which compells the reader to 

think. 

I present but a single proposition in the answer. 

I make summaries which teaches the finding of relations 
between facts, and properly bringing them together. 

Explanations are made of terms not in common use. 

I make digests to show what to look for in the chapter re- 

fered to. 

Hoping this work will accomplish the end sought, 

I Dedicate It to My Specie. 



Catechism of Karl Marx's "Capital" 



Book I. Commodities and Mon§y. 



CHAPTER I. COMMODITIES. 

Section 1. The two factors of a commodity : Use- value and 
Value. (The substance of value and the magnitude of value. ) 

1. The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode 
of production prevails, presents itself as an immense accumulation 
of commodities ; its unit being a single commodity. 

What presents itself ? The wealth. 

What wealth ? The wealth of those societies in which the 
capitalist mode of production prevails. 

How does this wealth present itself ? As an immense accumu- 
lation of commodities. 

What is the unit of this wealth ? A single commodity. 

What, then, must we begin our investigation with ? The 
analysis of a commodity. 

What do we mean by the word analysis ? The separating of 
a thing into its elements, or parts, and considering each part separ- 
ately. 

2. What is a commodity ? In the first place an object outside 
of us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some 
sort or another. 

The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring 
from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. 

Neither are we here concerned how the object satisfies these 
wants-whether directly as a means of subsistence, or indirectly as 
means of production. 

3. What do commodities consist of ? All useful things. 
How may they be looked at ? From two points of view : that 

of quality and that of quantity. 

And what are they ? An assemblage of many properties. 

How may they be used ? In various ways. 

How do we discover the various uses of things ? It is the 
work of history. 



CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



A thing may be used to-day for one purpose, to-morrow for 
another. Hence, by all the uses it has been put to, or the history of 
its past uses gives us its uses of the present. 

What else does this history give us? The socially recognized 
standard of measures for the quantity of these useful objects. 

In what has the diversity of these measures origin? First, 
partly in the diverse nature of these objects— the liquids have gills, 
quarts, gallons, etc.,— it would be difficult to measure liquids by the 
foot, yard, etc. On the other hand, it would be difficult to measure 
land by the quart or gallon. Second, and partly by convention. 

What is here meant by "convention?" 

The common consent, or agreement of society. 

4. What is use- value? 
The utility of a thing. 

How is the utility of a thing limited? 

By its physical properties. 

Has use-value any existence apart from the commodity ? No. 

What is a commodity as a use- value? 

Something useful— a utility. 

A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, so far as it is 
a material thing, is a use-value. 

Does this property— utility— depend on labor? . 

No, it is essentially independent of the amount of labor re- 
quired to appropriate its useful qualities. 

What do we assume when treating of use- values? 

To be dealing with definite quantities— such as dozens of 
watches, yards of linen, tons of iron, etc. 

For what special study doe| commodities furnish the material? 

That of the commercial knowledge of commodities— to be suc- 
cessful a merchant must know to what use a thing can be put to, in 
his locality. 

When do use- values become a reality? 

Only when being consumed. 

What do commodities constitute besides use- values? 

The substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form 
of that wealth. 

What are they in the society we are about to consider? 

The material depositories of exchange value. 

What have we found, so far as we have gone in our analysis, 
a commodity to be? 

First, a material object that satisfies some human want. Sec- 
ond, a depository of value. 

5. Our next step will be to consider exchange value. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 



How does exchange value first present itself? 

As a quantitative relation, as the proportion in which value in 
use of one sort, are exchanged for those of another sort. 

Is this relation constant? No. The quantity of a commodity 
that will exchange for a certain quantity of another commodity is 
constantly changing with time and place. 

What does exchange value appear to be? 

Something accidental, and purely relative, and consequently 
an intrinsic value. 

How intrinsic? As something that is inherent in, and insepar- 
able from commodities. 

And what does this seem to be? 

A contradiction in terms. 

Let us consider the matter a little more closely, and we will 
find the contradiction only seemingly so. 

6. A given commodity, for example: a quarter of wheat, is 
exchanged for x blacking, y silk, z gold, etc. , in short, for other 
commodities in the most different proportions. 

What does x, y and z, in our illustration, mean? 

Quantities of an unknown amount. The quantity, whatever 
it may be, is represented by a letter, known quantities by the first 
letters, unknown quantities by the last letters of the alphabet. 

What do we see by this example? First, that the wheat has 
many exchange values, in fact, it has as many exchange values, as 
there are different commodities placed in exchange with it. Second, 
that if x blacking, y silk, and z gold, each represent the exchange 
value of a quarter of wheat, they must, as exchange values be 
equal to each other. 

What other element have we now found in a commodity? 
Exchange value. 

What is value? Simply a mode of expression. 

What does the valid exchange value of a commodity express? 
Something equal. 

To speak proper, exchange value is value. The value of a 
commodity is its phenomenal form, something contained in it yet 
distinguishable from it. 

How are the proportions in which commodities are exchange- 
able represented? By an equation. 

7. Let us take two commodities; for example, corn and iron. 
The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever 

that proportion may be, can always be represented by an equation, 
in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of 



CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



iron. For instance, 1 quarter of corn = x cwt. of iron. 

What does this equation tell us? 

That in two different things— 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of 
iron— there exists in equal quantities, something common to both. 

What must these two things be equal to? 

A third thing which, in itself, is neither the one nor the other. 

What must they each, as exchange value, be reduceable to? 
This third thing. 

8. A single geometrical illustration will make this clear. 

In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear 
figures, we decompose them into triangles. 

But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by something 
totally different, from its visible figure— namely, by half the product 
of the base into the altitude. 



Base, 6 one-half 6 = 3 x by 8 the altitude = 24 the area. 

How must the exchange value of commodities be capable of 
being expressed. 

In the same way as the geometrical figure— that is, in terms 
of something common to them all, of which they represent a greater 
or less quantity. 

9. Is this something common a natural property? 

No. It can be neither a chemical, geometrical, nor any other 
natural property of a commodity— natural properties claim our 
attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodi- 
ties—make them use-values. 

But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act character- 
ized by a total abstraction from its use- value. Then one use-value 
is just as good as another, provided only it- be present in sufficient 
quantity. Or as old Barbon says: "One sort of wares is as good 
as another, if the values be equal." "There is no difference or dis- 
tinction in things of equal value. An hundred pounds' 
worth of lead or iron is of as great value as one hundred pounds' 
worth of silver or gold." 

What are commodities as use- values? 

Above all, they are of different qualities. 

What are they as exchange values? 

Merely different quantities, and do not contain an atom of 
use-value. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 



10. If we leave out of consideration the use-value of com- 
modities, what have we left? 

Only one common property, that of being the product of labor. 

But the product of labor itself has undergone a change in our 
hands. 

If we make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstrac- 
tion, at the same time, from the material elements and shapes that 
make the products a use- value; we see in it no longer a table, a 
house, yard, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material 
thing is put out of sight. 

What further abstraction do we make? 

We make abstraction from the useful character and concrete 
kinds of labor embodied in the products. 

And what is left? 

Nothing but what is common to all commodities. It is no 
longer the labor of the joiner, mason, tailor, spinner, nor any other 
concrete form of labor— all are reduced to one and the same sort 
of labor— human labor in the abstract. 

11. Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; 
it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congela- 
tion of homogeneous human labor, of labor power expended without 
regard to the mode of its expenditure. 

What do these things tell us? Only that human labor power 
has been expended in their production, and that labor is embodied 
in them. 

When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common 
to them all, what are they? Values. 

12. What have we now discovered? The third thing to which 
the former two things are equal, which is common to them both, and 
is neither the one nor the other. 

And that is the social substance— homogeneous human labor— 
i. e., labor in the abstract. 

We also find that value expresses the quantity of homogeneous 
human labor embodied in a commodity. And that value manifests 
itself as something totally independent of the use-values, or utility 
of a commodity. 

But if we abstract from their use- value what remains? Noth- 
ing but their value as defined above. 

Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the 
exchange of commodities is their value. 

The progress of our investigation will show that exchange 
value is the only form in which the value of commodities can mani- 



6 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



fest itself, or be expressed. 

For the present, however, we have to consider the nature of 
value, independent of this, its form. 

13. Why has an article value? 

Only because human labor, in the abstract, has been material- 
ized in it. 

How is the magnitude of value to be measured ? 

Plainly, by the quantity of value creating substance— labor— 
contained in an article. 

How is the quantity of labor measured? By its duration, 
labor-time finds its standard in weeks, days and hours. 

14. If you shirk, or work slowly, and spend a great deal of 
time on the production of an article will it have more value? Indeed 
not. For the labor that forms the substance of value is homogeneous 
human labor; expenditure of one uniform labor power. 

How do we determine the uniform labor power, that is, the 
unit of value? The total labor power of society is embodied in the 
sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, 
and it counts as one homogeneous mass of human labor power, 
although it is composed of 'individual units. 

How do each of these individual units count when separate? 
The same as any other. That is, in so far as it has the character of 
average labor power of society, and takes effect as such. Hence, 
the labor power, embodied in a commodity that gives it value, is 
only that amount of labor-time socially necessary for its production. 

How do we determine the duration of time socially necessary 
for the production of a given article? By that required under normal 
conditions of production. 

What constitutes the normal condition of production? First, 
the degree of labor-saving machinery. Second, the average degree 
of skill and the intensity of labor prevalent at the time. 

As an example of contrast between necessary and waste of 
labor-time in production we will cite: The introduction of power- 
looms in England, probably reduced by one-half the labor-time 
required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. 

The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact continued to 
require the same time as before. 

But, for all that, the product of one hour of their labor repre- 
sented, after the change, only half an hour's socially necessary 
labor, and consequently fell to one-half its former value. 

15. What do we glean from this illustration? That that which 
determines the magnitude of value is: The amount of labor socially 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 



necessary to produce an article. 

How do we consider each individual commodity? As an aver- 
age sample of its class. Commodities, therefore, in which equal 
quantities of labor are embodied— or which can be produced in the 
same time— have equal value. 

What are all commodities, as values? Only definite masses 
of congealed labor-time. 

16. Does the value of commodities remain constant? No. 
But it would remain constant if the labor-time required for its pro- 
duction remained constant. 

But the labor-time changes with every variation in the pro- 
ductiveness of labor. 

How is the productiveness of labor determined? By various 
circumstances, among others: First, by the average amount of skill 
of the workmen. Second, the state of science and the degree of its 
practicable application. Third, the social organization of production. 
Fourth, the extent and means of production. Fifth, by physical 
conditions. 

For example: It takes the same amount of labor to plow, 
plant and cultivate an acre of land, one year as another. Now, if 
the rains, temperature and other physical conditions are favorable 
the acre of land will yield, say, twenty bushels of corn. And if the 
climatic conditions are unfavorable it will yield, say, but ten bushels 
of corn. 

Hence, in the unfavorable year ten bushels of corn will 
have embodied in them the same amount of labor as the twenty 
bushels of corn in the favorable year, and will, consequently, have 
the same value. 

What appears to happen from this condition of affairs? As a 
large tract of land is similarly affected, the favorable year, the local 
market has a large supply, the unfavorable year the local market 
has a great demand. 

What does this give rise to? The old mistaken notion 
that prices are regulated by the "law of supply and demand." 
Because in the favorable year the supply is large and prices are low. 
In the unfavorable year there is a seeming scarcity and prices are 
high. 

Why is this so if "supply and demand" does not regulate 
prices? From the fact stated alone, in the favorable year the 
same labor-time, say twenty hours, is embodied in twenty bushels 
of corn, as in the unfavorable year in ten bushels of corn. Hence, 
in the favorable year corn is worth one hour's labor-time per bushel, 
and in the unfavorable year two hours' labor-time per bushel. Their 



8 CATECHISM OP KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



price is governed by the law of value. 

The same labor extracts from rich mines more metal than from 
poor ones. 

Diamonds are of very rare occurrence upon the earth's surface, 
and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labor- 
time, consequently much labor is represented in a small compass. 

In richer mines the same quantity of labor would embody 
itself in more diamonds, and their value would fall. 

If we could succeed, at a small expenditure of labor, in con- 
verting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of 
bricks. 

In general, the greater the productiveness of labor, the less is 
the labor-time required for the production of an article, and the less 
is the amount of labor crystalized in that article, and the less is its 
value. And vice versa, the less the productiveness of labor, the 
greater is the labor-time required for the production of an article, 
and the greater is its value. 

How does the value of a commodity vary? Directly, as the 
quantity; and inversely, as the productiveness of the labor incorpo- 
rated in it. 

17. Can a thing have use- value without having value? This 
is the case whenever its utility is not due to labor— such as air, 
virgin soil, and natural meadows, etc. 

Can a thing be useful and the product of human labor without 
being a commodity? Certainly! Whoever directly satisfies his wants 
with the produce of his own labor creates, indeed, use-values, but 
not commodities, 

What must he do in order to create commodities? Produce 
use-values for others— social use-values. 

Can a thing have value without having a use- value? Cer- 
tainly not! If the thing is useless, so is the labor contained in it; it 
does not count as labor and, therefore, creates no value. 

Section 2. The two=fold character of the labor embodied in commodities. 

18. How did a commodity first present itself to us? As a 
complex thing— as use-value and exchange value. 

What have we also seen concerning labor? That it, also, 
possesses the same two-fold nature. 

How so? Because, in so far as it finds expression in value, it 
does not possess the same character that belongs to it, as a creator 
of use-values. 

As a creator of value it is abstract labor, while as creator of 
use-values it is concrete labor. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 9 

What great importance has this feature of labor? It is the 
pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns. 

Who was the first to discover this two-fold nature of labor? 
Karl Marx. 

Let us go more into detail and examine this two-fold character 
of labor. 

19. Let us take two commodities, such as a coat and ten 
yards of linen, and let the former be double the value of the latter, 
so that, if ten yards of linen = W, the coat = 2 W. 

20. What does the coat satisfy as a use-value? A particular 
want. 

And to what does it owe its existence? To a special sort of 
productive activity. 

How is its nature determined? First, by its aim. Second, by 
its mode of operation. Third, by its subject. Fourth, by its means. 
Fifth, by its result. 

What do we call labor represented by the value in use of its 
product? Useful or concrete labor. 

How do we consider it in this connection ? Only by its useful 
effect. 

21. How does the coat and linen differ? Qualitatively, as 
two different use- values. 

How does the labor in them figure? As two different forms 
of useful labor— tailoring and weaving. 

Why must the labor in commodities be qualitatively different? 
Because if the labor was not of different quality they could not stand 
in the relation of commodities, for one use-value is not exchanged 
for another of the same sort. Coats are not exchanged for coats. 

22. What corresponds to all the different varieties of value 
in use? As many different kinds of useful labor. 

How do we classify the different kinds of labor? According 
to the order, genius , species and variety to which they belong in the J 
social division of labor. 

Note. —As many are not familiar with the terms used in the 
above paragraph I apply them to specific things: 

First— Order— of industry, manufacturing, agriculture, com- 
merce, etc. 

Second — Genius — locomotive building is a genius of the order 
of manufacturing. 

Third — Species— machinists, blacksmiths, boiler-makers, cop- 
per-smiths, molders, etc., are species of the genius locomotive build- 
ing. 



10 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



Fourth— Varieties Lathe hands, planer hands, shaper hands, 
bolt cutters, drill press bands, etc, are varieties of the species ma- 
chinist, etc. 

Is the division of labor necessary for the production of com- 
modities? Most certainly. 

Why? Because only such products can become commodities 
with regard to each other, as result, from different kinds of labor, 
carried on independently and for the account o( private individuals. 
For if all were to perform the same kind o( labor there would be 
nothing- to exchange. 

Can there be a social division o( labor without production of 
commodities? In the primitive Indian communities there is a social 
division of labor without the production of commodities. Their 
products being for use only. To-day in every large factory the 
laoor is divided according to a system, but this division is not 
brought about by the operatives exchanging their individual 
products. 

23. Resume: First, in the use-value o( each commodity there 
is contained useful labor. Second, use-values cannot confront each 
other as commodities unless the labor embodied in them is qualita- 
tively different in each. Third, in a community the produce ot 
which, in general, takes the form of commodities the qualitative 
difference between the useful forms o( laoor carried on independently 
by individual producers, each on his own account, develops into a 
complex system, a social division o( labor. 

What is this system called? The capitalist system of pro- 
duction. 

24. Does it cut any figure, as regards use-value, whether the 
coat is worn by the tailor or his customer? None whatever, in 
either case it operates as a use-value. 

Is the relation between the coat and the labor that produced 
it altered by the circumstance that tailoring has become an inde- 
pendent branch in the social division o( labor—a special trade? Not 
in the least, for whenever the want of clothing forced them to it, 
the human race made clothes for thousands o\' years without a single 
man becoming a tailor. 

To what do coats and linen owe their existence? A special 
productive activity, exercised with a definite aim. 

What does this labor do? Appropriates 'particular nature-given 
materials to particular human wants. 

What is useful labor as a creator o\' use- values? A necessary 
condition— independent of all forms of society— for the existence of 
the human race. It is an eternal nature imposed necessity, without 



COMMODITIES AND MONKY. 11 



which there could be no material exchange between man and nature, 
and therefore no life. 

2G. The use-values of commodities are a combination of what 

two elements? Mutter and labor. 

[f we abstra'-t the use-value from a commodity what is left? 
A materia] substratum which is not furnished by man. 

Note. Nature alone furnishes the chemical elements carbon, 
nitrogen, the alkalies, etc., that hemp absorbs from the soil in its 
growth. As well does nature furnish the warmth from the sun and 
soil that causes the capillary attraction. 

How does man work? The same as nature, by changing the 
form of matter. And what is more, he is constantly helped by 
nature, in changing the form of matter. 

What does this show us? That labor is not the only source; of 
material wealth. Labor is its father and nature its mother. 

20. Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a 
use-value to the values of commodities. 

27. What did we assume? That the coat was worth twic< 
much as the linen. 

But this is a mere quantitative difference which, for the pres- 
ent, does not concern us. 

What, then, must we bear in mind? That if the value of the 
coat is double that of ten yards of linen, then twenty yards of linen 
must have the same value as the coat. 

As values, what are coat and linen? Things of a like sub- 
stance objective expressions of essentially identical labor. 

But tailoring and weaving are qualitatively different kinds of 
labor. 

Are they fixed functions of different persons in all societies? 
No. There are states of society, in which the same man does tailor- 
ing and weaving alternately, and in this case these two forms of 
labor are mere modifications of the labor of the same individual. 

Just as the coat our tailor makes one day, and the trowsers he 
makes another day, imply only a variation in the labor of the same 
individual. 

How is it in our capitalist society? A given portion of human 
labor, in accordance with the varying demand, is at one time sup- 
plied in the form of tailoring, at another in the form of weaving. 

Must this change take place? Possibly not without friction, 
but take place it must. 

NOTE. Right here our bourgeois political economists strikes a 
snag. ''Supply and demand" receives a shock that blasts it. 

A greater demand for an article causes a greater number of 



12 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

laborers to be employed in the production of that article. 

It is a well-known fact that the greater the amount of an 
article produced the less labor it requires in proportion to that 
amount, and consequently, the less value contained in it. and the 
lower the price. 

A greater demand always cheapens an article, providing the 
conditions of production remain the same. 

For example— suppose you have only one coat to make, there 
is less labor in cutting- it out with hand shears than any other way. 
But suppose you have 10.000 coats to make, then you can save labor 
by spending 490 hours in making a machine that will cut 10.000 coats 
per hour. 

For, say. it took one hour to cut out a coat by hand, then 
10.000 coats would take 10.000 hours. 

Now. with the machine you could cut 10.000 coats in ten 
hours 490 hours' work on the machine and ten hours cutting makes 
500 hours labor, this would be three minutes to each coat. Hence, 
each coat would contain fifty-seven minutes less time and have that 
amount less value in it, would be that much cheaper. 

28. If we leave out of sight the special form and useful 
character of labor what is left? Nothing but the expenditure of 
human labor power, tailoring and weaving, although qualitatively 
different productive activities, are each a productive expenditure of 
human brains, nerves and muscles, and in this sense are human 
labor power. 

What does the value of a commodity represent? Human labor 
in the abstract. 

There are two different modes of expending labor power, of 
course, this labor power, which remains the same under all its 
modifications, must have attained a certain pitch of development 
before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. 

And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great 
part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part, so here 
here with mere human labor. It is the expenditure of simple 
labor power, w r hich, on an average, apart from any special develop- 
ment, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. 

Does this simple average labor vary? Yes, in different coun- 
tries and at different times, but in a particular country it is given. 

How does skilled labor count? Only as simple labor intensified. 

Note. —Let us say that it takes five years to learn a par- 
ticular trade, and that the average length of life in that trade is 
fifteen years, now, there is twenty years of labor-time spent, and 
necessarily so, in the articles produced during the fifteen years of 



COMMODITIES AND MOM 13 



skilled labor applied to the products of that artisan. Hence, three 
hours of his labor would be equal to four hour of .simple labor. 

How do we reduce the value of a commodity produced by 
skilled labor to the value of simple labor? By equating it to the 
product of unskilled labor. 

How is the standard of proportion between the product of 
skilled and unskilled labor established? By a social process that 
goes on behind the backs of the produce] 

How does it seem to be fixed." By custom. Hence for 
simplicity's sake, we will count every kind of labor to be unskilled, 
simple labor. By this we do more than save ourselves the trouble 
of making- the reduction. 

29. What do we do in viewing - the coat and linen as vai 
Abstract from their different use-values. 

How do we treat the labor representing those values? We dis- 
regard the difference between its useful forms tailoring and 
weaving. 

What are coat and linen as use-values? Special productivities 
with cloth and yarn. 

What are they as values? Mere homogeneous congelations of 
indifferentiated human labor. 

How does the labor embodied in these values count? Only as 
the expenditure of human labor power, and not by its productive 
reletion with cloth and yarn. 

Why are tailoring and weaving necessary factors in the 
creation of use-values, coat and linen ; " Because these two kinds of 
labor are of different qualities. 

How is it that they both form the substance of the values of 
the same articles.-' Only in so far as abstraction is made from their 
special qualities, and that both possess the quality of being human 
labor. 

30. What are coat and linen more than values? Values of 
definite quantities. 

What have we assumed? That the coat is worth twice as 
much as ten yards of linen. 

Whence this difference in their values? Because, in the pro- 
duction of the coat labor-time must have been expended during twice 
the time necessary for the production of ten yards of linen. 

31. How does labor count with reference to use-value? 
Qualitatively. 

How does labor count with reference to value? Quantitatively. 
What must the labor as value be reduced to? Human labor 
pure and simple. 



14 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

In the former case it is a question of how and what? 

In the latter of how much? How long a time? 

Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents 
only the quantity of labor embodied in it, what follows? That all 
commodities when taken in certain proportions are equal in value. 

32. If the productive power of all sorts of labor remains the 
same, how could the value of coats be increased? Only by the 
increase of the number of coats If one coat represents one day's 
labor two coats would represent two days' labor, and so on for the 
number of coats produced. 

Assume the labor-time necessary to produce a coat become 
doubled, then what? One coat is worth as much as two coats were 
before. 

Assume the labor-time necessary to produce a coat be reduced 
by one-half, what then? Two coats are worth only as much as one 
was before. 

Does either of these changes alter, in any way, the use- value 
of coats? Not in the least, for the coat renders the same service as 
before, and the labor embodied in coats remain of the same quality, 
but the quantity of labor spent on coats has altered. 

33. What does an increase of use- value give us? An increase 
of material wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed, while 
with one coat only one man can be clothed. 

Does an increase of wealth always give us an increase of 
value? No. For we may have an increase of wealth and a decrease 
of the magnitude of value at the same time. 

In what has this antagonistic movement its origin? In the 
twofold character of labor. 

To what have we reference when we say the productive power 
of labor? Only of labor of some useful concrete kind. 

Upon what does the efficacy of any special productivity during 
a given time depend? Its productiveness. 

What does useful labor become? A more or less abundant 
source of products, in proportion to the rise or fall of its productive- 
ness. 

Does the change in productiveness effect the labor represented 
by value? No. For so soon as we make abstractions from the con- 
crete useful forms it can no longer have any bearing on that labor. 

However then, however productive power may vary, the same 
labor, exercised during equal periods of time always yield equal 
amounts of value. 

The same change in productive power, which increases the 
fruitfullness of labor, and, in consequence, the quantity of use- 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. ' •" 

values produced by that labor will diminish the total value of this 
increased use-values, provided such change shorten the total labor- 
time necessary for their production and vice versa. 

34. On the one hand, all labor is, speaking physiologically, 
an expenditure of human labor-power, and in its character of identic- 
al abstract human labor it creates and forms the value of com- 
modities. 

On the other hand, all labor is the expenditure of human 
labor-power in a special form and with a definite aim; and, in this, 
its character of concrete useful labor, it produces use-values. 

Section 3.— The Form of Value, or Exchange Value. 

35. How do commodities come into the world? In the shape 
of use- values, articles or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, etc. , this 
is their plain, homely, bodily form. 

Why are they commodities? Only because they are some- 
thing, two-fold— both objects of utility, and at the same time 
depositories of value. 

How do they manifest themselves as, or have the form of, 
commodities? Only in so far as they have two forms— a physical or 
material form, and a value-form. 

36. Is the value of a commodity a material substance? No, 
indeed, not an atom of the material substance of a commodity enters 
into its value. 

Examine a single commodity as you will and in so far as it 
remains an object of value it seems impossible to grasp it. 

What must we bear in mind to comprehend the value of a 
commodity? That it has a purely social reality. 

How is this reality acquired? Only in so far as they are ex- 
pressions or embodiments of one identical social substance— namely, 
human labor. 

And it follows, as a matter of course, that value can manifest 
itself only in the social relation of commodity to commodity. 

Where did we start from? Exchange value, or the exchange 
relation of commodities. 

And what have we found ? The value that lies hidden behind it. 

37. We must now return to this form, under which value 
first appeared to us. 

Everyone knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities 
have a value form common to them all, and present a marked con- 
trast with the varied bodily forms of their use values. 

What is this value form of commodities? The money form. 

What task have we now before us? One that no bourgeois 
economist has ever attempted to perform. 



*6 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

And what is that? Tracing the genesis of the money form, 
or developing the expression of value implied in the value relation 
of commodities, from its simplest, almost imperceptible outline to the 
dazzling money form. 

What do we accomplish, at the same time, by doing this? 
Solve the great sphinx-like riddle presented by money. 

38. What is the simplest value relation? That of one com- 
modity to some one other commodity of a different kind. 

What does the value relation between two commodities sup- 
ply us with? The simplest expression of the value of a single com- 
modity; and gives us the elementary form of value. 

A.— Elementary or accidental form of value. 

X com. A =. Y com. B. or X com. A. is worth Y com. B. 

Twenty yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth 
1 coat. 

I. The two poles of the expression of value; relative form and equivalent 
form. 

The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this 
elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty. 

39. What are the parts played by the two different com- 
modities? One, the linen, plays an active part, it expresses its 
value in the coat. The other, the coat, plays a passive part, it 
serves as the material in which value is expressed. 

How is the linen represented? As relative value, or it 
appears in relative form. 

How does the coat officiate? As equivalent, or appears in 
equivalent form. 

40. How are these two forms considered? As poles of the 
same expression. 

They are two intimately connected, mutually dependent, and 
inseparable elements of the expression of value; but at the same 
time, mutually exclusive and antagonistic extremes. Hence, poles 
that are as opposites, as the poles of a magnet. 

How are they alloted? Respectively to the two different com- 
modities brought into relation by that expression. 

Twenty yards of linen = twenty yards of linen is no ex- 
pression of value. 

It simply says that twenty yards of linen is twenty yards of 
linen— a definite quantity of linen. 

How can the value of the linen be expressed? Only relatively, 
that is, in some other commodity. 

What does the relative form of the value of the linen pre- 
suppose? The presence of some other commodity in the form of 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 17 



equivalent— in this case the coat. 

Can the equivalent commodity, at the same time, assume the 
relative form? No, indeed. 

What is its function? To serve as the material for expressing 
the value of other commodities. 

41. What does the expression twenty yards of linen = one 
coat imply? The opposite relation, one coat = twenty yards of 
linen. 

What would the reversed equation, one coat = twenty yards 
of linen, express? The relative value of the coat. 

What does the linen become? The equivalent instead of the 
coat. 

A single commodity cannot, therefore, simultaneously assume, 
in the same expression of value, both forms. 

The very polarity of these forms makes them mutually ex- 
clusive. 

42. Upon what does it depend, which form of value a com- 
modity assumes? Entirely upon accident, that is, whether it is the 
one expressing value, or the one whose value is being expressed. 

2. The relative form of value. 

A. The nature and import of this form. 

43. How can we discover how the elementary expression of 
the value of a commodity lies hidden in the value relation of two 
commodities? By considering the value relation of the two com- . 
modities entirely apart from their quantative aspect. 

What is the usual mode of procedure? Generally the reverse, 
and in the value relation nothing is seen, but the proportions between 
definite quantities of two different sorts of commodities, that are 
considered equal to each other. 

What, then, is apt to be forgotten? That the magnitude of 
different things can be compared, quantitatively, only when those 
magnitudes are expressed in terms of the same unit. It is only as 
expressions of such a unit that they are of the same denomination 
and, therefore, commensurable. 

44. What is the basis of our equation? Linen = coat. 
What does it imply whether twenty yards of linen = one 

coat or = two coats, or = x coats, that is, whether a given quantity 
of linen is worth few or many coats? That linen and coats as 
magnitudes of value, are expressions of the same unit, things of the 
same kind. Linen and coat is the basis of the equation. 

45. But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus 
assumed do not play the same part. 



18 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

What is expressed? Only the value of the Linen. 
How? By its reference to the coat as its equivalent, as some- 
thing that can be exchanged for it. 

What is the coat, in this relation, as equivalent? The mode 
of existence of value, value embodied: for only as such is it the same 
as the linen. 

Why does the Linen's own value come to the front and re- 
ceive independent expression.- Only because that it is value, is it 
comparable with the coat as a thing of equal value, or exchangeable 
with it. To make this more clear, let us borrow an illustration from 
chemistry. In chemistry there are two substances that are com- 
pounds of the same chemical substances. One is butyric acid, the 
other is propyle formate. They are not only o( the same chemical 
substance, but are also of the same proportion o( each. Namely, 
butyric acid consists of carbon. 4. hydrogen, 8. and oxygen, 2. 
propyle formate also consists of carbon. 4; hydrogen, S. and oxygen, 
2. Now, if we equate butyric acid to propyle formate, them in the 
first place, propyle formate would be. in this relation, merely a 
form of existence of carbon, 4; hydrogen, S; oxygen, 2 parts. Next 
we would be stating- that butyric acid also consists of carbon, 4; 
hydrogen, 8, and oxygen, 2. 

Thus by equating the two substances, expression would be 
given to their chemical composition, while their different physical 
forms would be neglected. 

46. Now, in our consideration o( commodities we have noticed 
only the relation of value. 

What do we reduce commodities to when we say that they 
are only the congelation of human labor? To the abstraction— 
value. 

Do we ascribe to this value any particular form? None apart 
from their bodily form. 

How is it when we place commodities in value relation with 
one another? Then one stands forth in its character of value, by 
reason of its relation to the other. 

47. What have done in making the coat equivalent to the 
linen? Equated the labor embodied in the coat to the labor em- 
bodied in the linen, although tailoring, which makes the coat is con- 
crete labor, of a different sort from the weaving that makes the 
linen. 

What reduces these different kinds of labor to their common 
character, that of human labor? The act of equating the different 
commodities. 

What does this express? The fact that weaving— in so far as 



COMMODITIES AND MON1 19 



it weaves valaes, has nothing to lish it. from tailoring, and, 

equently, is abstract human labor. 

What brings into relief the specific character of value-creat- 
ing labor.-' The expression of equivalence between different 
of commodities, by actually reducing the labor embodied in them to 
its common quality of human labor in the abstract. 

18. What is required beyond the expression of the specific 
character of labor, which is value? It must have objective 
istence. That is it must be embodied in some object. 

Is human labor-power, in itself, valuer No, indeed. 

How does labor become value." Only by being congealed— 
that is, when embodied in some object. 

How must the value of a commodity be expressed? As some- 
thing' materially different from the commodity, and yet as some- 
thing common to it, and to all other commodities. The problem is 
already solved. 

49. How does the coat rank qualitative as the equal of the 
linen? As something of the same kind, because it is value. 

How do we see the coat, when in the position of equivalent? 
As nothing but value, a something whose palpable bodily form repre- 
sents value. 

What is the body of the commodity— coat— itself? A mere 
use- value. And as a coat, it no more tells that it is value than the 
first piece of linen we take hold of. 

What does this show us? That when put in value relation the 
coat has more signification than when out of that relation. 

50. How is the coat a depository of value? In the production 
of the coat, human labor-power, in the shape of tailoring must have 
been actually expended. Human labor-power is, therefore, accumu- 
lated in it. And in this aspect the coat is a depository of value. 
But though worn to a thread it does not let this fact show through. 

How does the coat exist, as equivalent to the linen, in the 
value equation? As a depository of value— as embodied value— as 
a body that is value. 

A, for instance, cannot be "your majesty" to B, unless at the 
same time majesty in B's eyes assumes the bodily form of A, and, 
what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its 
ures, hair, and many other things besides. 

51. How does the coat, as equivalent of the linen officiate in 
the value equation? As the form of value. The value of the linen 
is expressed by the bodily form of the coat, that is, by the use-value 
coat. 

As use- value, are coat and linen the same? No, they are 



20 CATECHISM OP KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 1 



palpably different. But. as values, they are the same. and. further- 
more, the linen has the same appearance as the eeat. Thus the 
linen acquires a value- form different from its physical form. 

The fact that it is value is made manifest by its equality with 
the coat. Just as the sheep's nature of a Christian is shown in his 
resemblance to the Lamb of God. 

52. We see, then, all that our analysis of a commodity has 
already told us, is told us by the linen itself, so soon as it comes 
into communication with another commodity— the coat. Only it 
betrays its thoughts in the language with which it is familiar, the 
language of commodities. 

In order to tell us that its own value is created by labor, in its 
abstract character of human labor, it says that the coat, in so far as 
it is worth as much as the linen, and therefore is value, consists of 
the same labor as the linen. 

In order to inform us that its sublime reality as value is not 
the same as its buckram body, it says that value has the appearance 
of a coat, and, consequently, that so far as the linen is value, it and 
the coat are like as two peas. 

53. Summary— By means, therefore, of the value relation 
expressed in our equation, the bodily form of commodity B becomes 
the value form of commodity A, or the body of commodity B acts as 
a mirror to the value of commodity A. 

Note.— In a sort of way it is with man as it is with com- 
modities: Since he comes into w r orld neither with a lookingglass in 
his hand nor as a Fichtian philosopher, to whom "I am I" is 
sufficient. Man first sees and recognizes himself in other men. 
Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing 
himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he 
stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the 
genus, Homo. 

By putting itself in relation with commodity B, as value in 
propria persona, as the matter of which human labor is made up, the 
commodity A converts the value in use, B, into the substance in 
which to express its, A's own value. The value of A thus expressed 
in the use-value of B has taken the form of relative value. 

(6.) Quantitative determination of relative value. 

54. What is every commodity, whose value it is intended to 
express? A useful object of given quantity, such as 15 bushels of 
corn, or 100 pounds of coffee. 

What does a given quantity of any commodity contain? A 
.definite quantity of human labor. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 21 

What must the value form express, besides value in general? 
Value of a definite quantity. Therefore, in the value relation of 
commodity A (linen) to commodity B (coat), not only is the coat, 
as value in general, made the equal in quality of the linen, but a 
definite quantity of coat (one coat) is made the equivalent of a 
definite quantity (twenty yards) of linen. 

What does the equation, twenty yards of linen = one coat 
imply? That the same quantity of value substance (congealed la- 
bor) is embodied in both; that the two commodities have cost the same 
amount of labor-time. 

As the labor- time necessary for the production of twenty 
yards of linen, or one coat varies with every change in the pro- 
ductiveness of tailoring and weaving what must we consider? The 
influence of such change on the quantitative aspect of the relative 
expression of value. 

56. Let the value of the linen vary, in magnitude, the coat 
remaining the same. 

If in consequence— of the exhaustion of flax-growing soil, or 
from any other cause, the labor-time necessary for the production of 
the linen be doubled, how would it effect the relative value of 
the linen? It would be doubled. 

How would the equation stand? Twenty yards of linen = two 
coats. Why? Because, now, one coat contains only half the labor- 
time embodied in twenty yards of linen. 

On the other hand, if in consequence of improved looms, or 
from any other cause, the labor-time necessary to produce twenty 
yards of linen fall by one-half, how would it affect the relative value 
of the linen? It would fall by one-half, consequently we would have 
twenty yards of linen = one-half coat. From this we deduce Rule I. 
The relative value of A (linen) expressed in commodity B (coat) rises 
and falls directly as the value of A (linen). The value of B (coat) 
remaining the same. 

57. Now let the value of the linen remain constant, while the 
value of the coat varies, in magnitude. 

If, from any cause, the labor-time necessary for the produc- 
tion of the coat be doubled, what is the equation? Twenty yards of 
linen equal one-half coat. 

If the value of the coat sinks by one-half what is the equation? 
Twenty yards of linen equal two coats. 

From this we deduce Rule II. The value of commodity A 
(linen) remaining constant, its relative value expressed in com- 
modity B (coat) rises and falls inversely as the value of B (coat) . 

58. What do we find by comparing the different in cases 



22 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



Rules I and II? That the same change of magnitude in relative 
value may arise from totally opposite causes. Thus the equation 
twenty yards of linen equal one co;U. becomes twenty yards of linen 
equal two coats, either, because the value of the linen has doubled, 
or because the value of the coat has fallen by one-half. On the other 
hand it becomes twenty yards of linen equal one-half coat, either 
because the value of the linen has fallen by one-half, or because the 
value of the coat has doubled. 

59. Let the quantity of labor-time necessary for the produc- 
tion of linen and coat vary simultaneously in the same direction and 
in the same proportion, what would the equation be? The same- 
twenty yards of linen equal one coat— however much their values 
may have altered. , 

Then how do we find out that their values has changed? By 
comparing them to a third commodity whose value has remained 
constant. Rule III. 

But suppose that the values of all commodities rose or fell 
simultaneously Then how could we tell that their values had 
changed, their relative value being unaltered? Their real change of 
value would appear from the diminished or increased quantities of 
commodities produced in a given time. 

60. The labor-time respectively necessary for the production 
of the linen and coat, and therefore, the value of these commodities, 
may simultaneously vary in the same direction, but at unequal rates, 
or in opposite direction, or in other ways. 

The effect of all these possible different variations, on the 
relative value of a commodity, may be deduced from the results of 
Rules I, II and III. 

61. Summary— The real changes in the magnitude of value 
are neither unequivocally nor exhaustively reflected in their relative 
expression, that is, in the equation expressing the magnitude of 
relative value. 

The relative value of a commodity may vary, although its real 
value remains constant. 

Its relative value may remain constant, although its value va- 
ries. And, finally, simultaneous variations in the magnitude of valu< 
and in that of its relative expression by no means correspond in amount. 

3. The equivalent form of value. 

62. How does a commodity, coat, become impressed with a 
specific value form, namely, the equivalent form? Simply b 
commodity of a different kind linen— expressing its value in the 
use-value of that commodity— coat. 



COMMODITIES AND MONKV. 23 



How does the commodity linen manifest its quality of having 
value? By the fact that the coat, without having assumed a value 
form different from its bodily form, is equated to the linen. 

How is the fact, that the coat has value, expressed? By say- 
ing that the coat is directly exchanagable with the linen. 

What do we express by saying a commodity has the equivalent 
form? That it is directly exchangeable with other commodities. 

63. When one commodity, such as a coat, serves as the equiva- 
lent of another, such as linen, and coats consequently acquire the char- 
acteristic property of being directly exchangeable with linen, we are 
far from knowing in what proportion the two are exchangeable. 

Upon what does the proportion depend, the value of the linen 
being given in magnitude? On the value of the coat, 

How is the magnitude of the coat's value determined ? Entirely 
independent of its value form, by the labor-time necessary for its 
production. 

How does the coat, in the equation of value, as the equivalent, 
figure? Only as a definite quantity of some article. 

64. For instance, forty yards of linen are worth— what? 
two coats. 

Why? Because the coat here plays the part of equivalent. 
Because the use-value, coat, as opposed to the linen, figures as an 
embodiment of value. Hence, a definite number of coats suffices 
to express a definite quantity of linen. 

What may express the value of forty yards of linen? Two 
coats. 

Can the two coats express their own value? Never! 

A superficial observation of this fact, namely, that in the 
equation of value, the equivalent figures exclusively as a simple 
quantity of .some article, of some use- value, has mislead Bailey, as 
well as some others, both before and after him, into seeing, in the ex- 
pression of value, merely a quantitative relation; the truth being that, 
when a commodity acts as an equivalent no quantitative determina- 
tion is expressed. 

65. What is the first peculiarity that strikes us in consider]' n.e - 
the form of the equivalent? That use-value becomes the form of 
manifestation of— the phenomenal form— its opposite— value. 

66. When does the bodily form of a commodity become its 
value form? Only when some other commodity enters into a value 
relation with it, and then only within that relation. Since no com- 
modity can stand in relation of equivalent to itself, and thus turn its 
own bodily shape into the expression of its own value, every com- 
modity is compelled to choose some other commodity for its equiva- 



24 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



lent and to accept the use-value— that is to say the bodily shape of 
that commodity as the form of its own value. 

67. One of the measures that we apply to commodities as 
material substance— as use-value will serve to illustrate this point. 

A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight; 
but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take various 
pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined before hand. The 
iron, as iron, is no more the manifestation of weight than ; s the 
sugar-loaf. 

How do we express the sugar-loaf as so much weight? We 
put it in weight relation with the iron. 

How does the iron officiate in this relation? As a body repre- 
senting nothing -but weight. 

How does the iron express the weight of the sugar-loaf ? \ 
certain quantity of iron serves as the measure of the weight, of the 
sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight em- 
bodied, and is the form or manifestation of weight. 

When does the iron manifest weigh t? Only when the body 
whose weight has to be determined enters into weight relation with 
the iron. 

Why are they capable of entering into this relation? Because 
they are both heavy. Were they not both heavy they could not 
enter into this relation, and the one could not serve as the expression 
of the weight of the other. 

What do we find when both are thrown into the scales? That 
in reality, as weight, both are the same; and, that when taken in 
the proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the 
substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation to 
the sugar-loaf, weight alone. So, in our expression of value, the 
material object coat, in relation to linen, represents value alone. 

68. Here, however, pur analogy ceases, and why? Because 
the iron, in the expression of the weight of the sugar-loaf repre- 
sents a natural property common to both bodies — namely, their weight, 

While the coat, in the expression of the value of the linen, 
represents a non-natural property of both, something purely social — 
namely, their value. 

69. How do we discover that a social relation lies at the 
bottom of the relative value form? Since the relative value form of 
a commodity— the linen for example— expresses the value of that 
commodity as being something wholly differ* nt from its substance 
and properties, as being, for instance, coat-like, we see that this 
expression itself indicates that some social relation lies at the bottom 
of it. 



[MODITIES AND M 25 



How is it with the equivalent form? itrary. 

the irerj e of this form is that, the material substance itself— 

the coat, just as it is expi alue, and i with the 

form of value by rial elf. 

Does this hold good under all c This holds 

good only o long as the value rela hich the coat 

stands in the position of equivalent to the li 

Is the property of a thing the result of its relat .her 

things? r ':rtainly not; but only man! b re- 

lation. 

How do they seem when in such relation? The coat seen 
be endowed with the equivalent form its property of being ex- 
changeable just as much by nature as it is endowed with the 
property of beii | , or the capacity to keep us warm. Hence 

the enigmatical character of the equivalent form escapes 
the notice of the bourgeois political economist until this form, 
com piety developed, confronts him in the shape of money. 

Then how does he seek to explain i deal charac- 

ter of gold and silver? B for them less dazzling 

commodities, and, by reciting, with ev ..faction 

the catalogue of all possible commodities which, at one time or 
another, played the part of equivalent. 

lie has not the least suspicion that the most simple expression 
of value, such as twenty yards of linen equal one coat, already pro- 
pounds the riddle of the equivalent for our solution. 

70. The body of the commodity that :- ■ -; equivalent 
figures as the materialization of human labor in the abstract. And 
yet what is it? The product of some ally concrete labor. 

What does this concrete labor become? The medium for ex- 
• abstract human labor. 

While the coat ranks as nothing but the embodiment of 
abstract human labor, how does the specific labor of tailoring count? 
As nothing but the form, under which that abstract labor is realized. 

Of what does tailoring, in the expression of the value of the 
linen, co ot in making clothes, but in making an object which 

we at once recognize to be value, and therefore to be a congealation 
of labor. 

B it, of what kind of labor r Labor indistinguishable from that 
realized in the lii 

What must the labor of tailoring reflect, to act as a mirror of 
value to the linen ? Nothing but its own abstract quality of being 
human labor generally. 

71. In tailorh . well as . . human labor-power is 



26 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

expended. 

How must they be considered, in the production of value? 
Under the aspect, of both possessing the general property of being 
human labor, and under this aspect alone. 

But how is the fact to be expressed, that weaving creates the 
value of the linen— not by being weaving, as such— but by its general 
property of being human labor? Simply by opposing to weaving, 
that other form of concrete labor— tailoring— which produces the 
equivalent of the product of weaving. 

Just as the coat in its bodily form became a direct expression 
of value, so now does tailoring, a concrete form of labor, appear as 
the direct and palpable embodiment of human labor generally. 

72. What is the second peculiarity of the equivalent form? 
That concrete labor becomes the form under which its opposite, 
abstract labor, manifests itself. 

73. Why does this concrete labor, tailoring, rank identical 
with the weaving embodied in the linen? Because it is identical 
with undifferentiated labor, therefore, ranks identical with any 
other sort of labor. 

What is all commodity producing labor? The labor of private 
individuals. 

How does it rank? As labor directly social in its character. 
And this is the reason why the product of tailoring is exchangeable 
with all other commodities. 

What is the third peculiarity of the equivalent form? That 
the labor of private individuals takes the form of its opposite, labor 
directly social in its form. 

74. The two latter peculiarities of the equivalent form will 
become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker, who 
was the first to analyze so many forms, whether of thought, society 
or nature, and among them also the form of value. I mean 
Aristotle. 

75. In the first place he clearly enunciated that the money 
form of commodities is only the further development of the simple 
form of value— that is the expression of the value of one commodity 
in some other commodity taken at random— for, he says: "Five 
beds equal one house is not to be distinguished from five beds equal 
so much money." 

76. He further sees that the value relation which gives rise 
to this expression makes it necessary that the house should qualita- 
tively be made the equal of the bed, and, that without such an 
equation, these two clearly different things could not be compared 
with each other as commensurable quantities. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 27 



. "Exchange," he says, "cannot take place without equality, 
and equality not without commensurability. " 

Here, however, he comes to a stop and gives up the further 
analysis of the form of value. 

"It is, however, in reality, impossible that such unlike things 
can be commensurable— that is, qualitatively equal." 

"Such an equalization can only be something foreign to their 
real nature, consequently, a make-shift for practical purposes. ' ' 

77. Aristotle, therefore, himself tells what barred the way 
to his further analysis. 

It was the absence of any concept of value. 

What is that equal something, that common substance, which 
admits of the value of the beds being expressed by the house? 
Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist. And why not? Compared 
with the beds, the house does represent something equal to them, 
really equal both in the beds and in the house, and that is human 
labor. 

78. What prevented Aristotle from seeing the important fact 
that, to attribute values to commodities, is merely expressing all 
labor as equal human labor? This: Greek society was founded 
upon slavery and had, therefore, for its natural basis the inequality 
of men and of their labor powers. 

What is the secret of the expression of value? That all kinds 
of labor are equal and equivalent, because, and in so far, as they 
are human labor in general. 

What are the conditions under which we are able to decipher 
this secret? That the notion of human equality has acquired a fixed 
popular prejudice. 

And in what society can such a prejudice be prevalent? Only 
in such societies, as in which the produce of labor takes the form of 
commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between 
man and man is that of owners of commodities. 

In other words, only in capitalist societies. 

The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, 
that he discovered, in the expression of the values of commodities, 
a relation of equality. 

The peculiar condition of the society in which he lived alone 
prevented him from discovering what "in truth" was at the bot- 
tom of this equality. 

The elementary form of value considered as a whole. 

79. In what is the elementary form of the value of a com- 
modity contained? The equation, expressing the value relation of 



28 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

one commodity to another of a different kind or its exchange rela- 
tion to the same. 

How is the value of a commodity qualitatively expressed? By 
the fact that other commodities are directly exchangeable with it. 

How is the value of a commodity quantitatively expressed? By 
the fact that a definite quantity of B (coat) is exchangeable with a 
definite quantity of A (linen). 

In other words, the value of a commodity obtains independent 
and definite expression, by taking the form of exchange value. 

When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common 
parlance, that a commodity is both a use-value and an exchange val- 
ue, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. 

A commodity is a use-value, or object of utility, and a value. 

When does a commodity manifest itself as this two-fold thing? 
As soon as its value assumes an independent form- -namely, the form 
of exchange value. 

It never assumes this form when isolated, but only when put 
in a value, or exchange, relation with another commodity of a differ- 
ent kind; when once we know this, such a mode of expression, as 
use value and exchange value, does no harm, it simply serves as an 
abreviation. 

80. What has our analysis shown, as regards the origin of 
the expression of value? Jhat the form, or the expression, of the 
value of commodities originate in the nature of value, and not that 
value originates in the mode of their expression as exchange value. 

That value and its magnitude originate in their mode of ex- 
pression, is the delusion, as well of the mercantilist and their recent 
revivers, Ferreir, Ganihl and others, as also of their antipodes, the 
modern bagmen of Free Trade, such as Bastiat. 

The mercantilist lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of 
the expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent form of 
commodities, which attains its full perfection in money. The mod- 
ern hawkers of Free Trade, who must get rid of their article at any 
price, on the other hand, lay most stress on the quantitative aspect 
of the relative form of value. 

For them, consequently, there exists neither value nor magni- 
tude of value, anywhere except in its expression by means of the 
exchange relation of commodities— that is, in the daily lists of prices 
current. 

MacLeod, who has taken upon himself to dress up the confus- 
ed ideas of Lombard street in the most learned finery, is a successful 
cross between the superstitious mercantilist and the enlightened 
Free Trade bagmen. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 29 

81. A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of A 
(linen) in terms of B (coat) contained in the equation expres 
the value relation of A to B has shown us, that, within that rela 1 
the bodily form of A figures only as use-value, the bodily form of B 
only as the form or aspect of value. 

The opposition or contrast, existing internally in each com- 
modity between use-value and value is, therefore, made evident ex- 
ternally by the two commodities being placed in such relation to i 
other that the commodity whose value it is sought to express figures 
directly as use-value, while the commodity in which that value i 
be expressed figures directly as mere exchange value. 

Hence the elementary form of value of a commodity is the ele- 
mentary form in which the contrast contained in that commodity, 
between use-value and value becomes apparent. 

82. What is every product of labor, in every state of society? 
A use-value. 

When does the product of labor become a commodity? Only 
at a definite historical epoch in a society's development, name- 
ly, at that epoch when the labor spent on the production of a useful 
article becomes expressed as one of the objective qualities of that 
article— that is its value. 

What does this show us? That the elementary form is also 
the primitive form under which the product of labor appears histori- 
cally as a commodity. 

And, that the gradual transformation of such products pro< 
step p with tl opment of the value form. 

What do we now perceive, at first sight? The deficiency 
of the elementary form of value. 

What must it undergo before it can ripen into the price form? 
A series of metamorphoses— change 

84. What does the expression of the value of commodity A, 
in terms of ai commodity B, distinguish? The value from the 

use-value of A. 

How does it place A ? Merely in a relation of exchange with 
a single different commodity B. 

But it is still far from expressing A's qualitative equality, and 
quantitative proportionality, to all other commodity 

What corresponds to the elementary relative value form of a 
commodity? Only the single equivalent form of one other com- 
modity. 

Thus in the relative expression of value of the linen, the coat 
rnes the form of equivalent, or of being directly exchangeable 
only in relation to a single commodity, the linen. 



30 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



85. What action does the elementary value form take? It 
passes, by an easy transition, into a more complete form. 

It is true that, by means of the elementary form, the value 
of a commodity A, becomes expressed in terms of one, and only one, 
other commodity. 

But what might that commodity be? A commodity of any 
kind, coat, iron, corn, or anything else. 

As we place A in relation with one or the other of these com- 
modities what do we get? Different elementary expressions of val- 
ue for the same commodity. 

How are the number of such possible expressions limited? 
Only by the number of different kinds of commodities distinct 
from it. 

What does this convert the isolated expressions of A's value 
into? A series, prolonged to any length, of the different elementary 
expressions of that value. 

B. Total or expanded form of value. 

Twenty yards of linen = 1 coat or = 10 pounds of tea or = 40 
pounds of coffee or = 1 quarter of corn or == 2 ounces of gold or — 1-2 
ton of iron or = etc. 

I.— The expanded relative form of value. 

86. How is the value of a single commodity, linen for exam- 
ple, now expressed? In terms of numberless other elements of the 
world of commodities. 

And what does every other commodity become? The mirror 
of the linen's value. 

It is thus, for the first time, that this value shows itself in its 
true light, as a congealation of undifferentiated labor. 

How does the labor embodied in the linen, now, stand? Ex- 
pressly revealed as labor that ranks equally with every other sort of 
human labor, no matter what its form, whether tailoring, plowing, 
mining, etc., and no matter, therefore, whether it is realized in 
coats, corn, iron, or gold. 

How does the linen, by virtue of its value form, now, stand? 
In a social relation, no longer with only one other kind of a com- 
modity, but with the whole world of commodities. 

As a commodity it is a citizen of the world. 

What does this interminable series of equations imply? That, 
as regards the value of a commodity, it is a matter of indifference 
under what particular form, or kind of use-value it appears. 

87. Does our first form, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, assure us 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 31 

that commodities are exchangeable in definite quantities? Not at all, 
for aught that otherwise appears, it might be purely accidental that 
these two commodities are exchangeable in definite quantities. 

Where do we at once, perceive the back-ground that determ- 
ines, and is essentially different from, this accidental appearance? In 
the second form— B. 

How so? Because the value of linen remains unaltered in 
magnitude, whether expressed in coats, coffee, iron, or in number- 
less different commodities, the property of as many different owners. 

What, now, becomes plain? That it is not the exchange of 
commodities that regulates their exchange value, but, on the con- 
trary, it is the magnitude of their value that controls their exchange 
proportions. 

2. The particular equivalent form. 

88. How does each commodity now figure? A commodity, 
such as coat, tea, corn, iron, etc. , figures in the expression of value 
of the linen, as an equivalent, and, consequently, as a thing that is 
value. 

How does the bodily form of these commodities figure? As a 
particular equivalent form, one out of many. 

How does the manifold useful kinds of labor, embodied in 
these communities, rank? As so many forms of the realization, or 
manifestations, of undifferentiated human labor. 

3. Defects of the total or expanded form of value. 

89. Why is the relative expression of value incomplete, in the 
expanded form? Because the series representing it is interminable. 

How so? Because, in the first place, the chain of which this 
equation is but a link, is liable, at any moment, to be lengthened by 
each new kind of commodity that comes into existence and furnishes 
the material for a fresh expression of value. 

And, in the second place, it is a many-colored mosaic of dis- 
parate and independent expressions of value. 

And, lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value of each 
commodity in turn becomes expressed in this expanded form, we get 
for each of them a relative value form, differing in each case, and 
consisting of an interminable series of expressions of value. 

How are the defects of the expanded relative value-form 
reflected? In the corresponding equivalent form. 

Since the bodily form of each single commodity is one particu- 
lar equivalent form among numberless others, what have we? No- 
thing but fragmentary equivalent forms excluding each other. 



32 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



How is the special concrete, useful kinds of, labor embodied 
in each particular equivalent presented? Only as a particular kind 
of labor, therefore not as an exhaustive representative of human 
labor generally. 

How does human labor generally gain adequate manifestation? 
In the totality of its manifold, particular, concrete forms. 

But, in that case, its expression in an infinite series is ever in- 
complete and deficient in unity. 

90. What is the expanded relative form? Nothing but the 
sum of elementary expressions, or equations, of the first kind, such 
as 20 yards of linen=l coat, 20 yards of linen=10 pounds of tea, 
etc. , 

What does each of these equations imply? The corresponding 
inverted equations, 1 coat= : 20 yards of linen, 10 pounds of tea=20 
yards of linen, etc. 

91. In fact, when a person exchanges his linen for many 
other commodities, and thus expresses its value in a series of other 
commodities, it necessarily follows, that the various owners of the 
latter exchange them for linen, and consequently express the value 
of their various commodities in one and the same third commodity— 
linen. 

If we give expression to the converse relation implied in the 
series, what do we get? 

The general form of value— Form C. 

1 coat 1 

10 pounds of tea 
40 pounds of coffee 

1 quarter of corn =20 yards of linen. 

2 ounces of gold 
1-2 ton of iron 
X commodity A, etc. 

I. The altered character of the form of value. 

92. How do all commodities now express their value? 
First.— In an elementary form, because in a single com- 
modity. 

Second. —With unity, because in one and the same commodity. 
Third.— This form of value is elementary and the same for all, 
therefore general. 

93. The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a 
commodity as something different from its use-value or material 
form. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 33 

94. When does the first form (A) practically occur? Only in 
the beginning, when products of labor are converted into commodi- 
ties by accidental and occasional exchanges. 

The first form A such as the following: 1 coat=20 yards of 
linen, 10 pounds of tea, 1-2 ton of iron, the value of the coat is 
equated to the linen, that of the tea to the iron. But to be equated 
to linen, and again to iron, is to be as different as is linen and iron. 

95. What does the second form (B) distinguish, in a more 
adequate manner than the first? The value of a commodity from its 
use-value; for the value of the coat is there placed in contrast, under 
all possible shapes, with the bodily form of the coat, it is equated to 
linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to itself, 
—the coat. 

On the other hand, any general expression of value common 
to all is directly excluded; for, in the equation of value of each com- 
modity, all other commodities appear only under the form of equiva- 
lents. 

When does the expanded form of value, for the first time, 
come into existence? So soon as a particular product of labor, such 
as cattle, is no longer occasionally, but habitually, exchanged for 
other commodities. 

96. How does the third, and last developed, form express the 
values of the world of commodities? In terms of a single commodi- 
ty, set apart for that purpose— namely, the linen. 

How do all other commodities represent their values? By 
means of their equality with linen. 

The value of every commodity is now, by being equated to the 
linen, not only differentiated from its use-value, but from all other 
use-values generally, and is by that very fact expressed as that 
which is common to all other commodities. 

How are commodities made to appear as values? By this— 
general— form commodities are, for the first time, effectually brought 
into relation with each other as values, or made to appear as values. 

97. The two earlier forms either express the value of each 
commodity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or in 
a series of many such commodities. 

In both cases it is, so to say, the special business of each 
single commodity to find an expression of its value; and this it does 
without the help of the others. 

These others, without respect for the former, play the passive 
part of equivalents. 

The general form C results from the joint action of the world 
of commodities and from that alone. 



34 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



How can a commodity acquire a general expression of its val- 
ue? Only by all other commodities, simultaneously with it, express- 
ing their values in the same equivalent. And every new commodity 
must follow suit. 

What does this make evident? That, since the existence of 
commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be ex- 
pressed by the totality of their social relation alone. 

What, then, must the form of their value be? A socially recog= 
ni/ed form. 

98. How do all commodities, being now equated to linen, 
appear? Not only as qualitatively equal as values generally, but 
also as values> whose magnitudes are capable of comparison. And 
by expressing the magnitude of their values in the same material— 
linen— those magnitudes are also compared to each other. 

For instance, 10 pounds of tea=20 yards of linen, and 40 
pounds of coffee=20 yards of linen, therefore, 10 pound of tea=40 
pounds of coffee. 

In other words, there is contained in one pound of coffee only 
one-fourth as much substance of value— labor— as is contained in 
one pound of tea. 

99. What does the general form of relative value convert, 
the single commodity, that acts as equivalents into? The universal 
equivalent. 

In our case, the linen is excluded from the rest and made to 
play the part of equivalent to all other commodities. 

What does the bodily form of linen now assume to be? The 
form assumed in common by the value of all other commodities. 

What does the substance— linen— become? The visible incar- 
nation, the social crysalis state of every kind of human labor. 

Weaving, which is the labor of certain private individuals pro- 
ducing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social 
character— the character of equality with all other kind of human 
labor. 

The innumerable equations of which the general form of value 
is composed, equate in turn the labor embodied in the linen to that 
embodied in every other commodity, and thus they convert weaving 
into the general form, or manifestation of undifferentiated human 
labor. 

In this manner the labor realized in the value of commodities 
is represented, not only in its negative aspect, under which abstrac- 
tion is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual 
work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. 

What do we see by the general value form? That all kinds of 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 35 



actual labor is reduced to their common character of being human 
labor generally-of being the expenditure of human labor power. 

100. What else does the general form show? That all labor 
possesses the character of being human labor, and of being specifical- 
ly social in its character. 

What constitutes its social character? Representing all pro- 
ducts of labor as mere congealations of undifferentiated human 
labor, which shows by its very structure that it is the social resume of 
the world of commodities. 

2. The interdependent development of the relative form of value and the 
equivalent form. 

101. What does the degree of development of the relative 
value form correspond to? That of the equivalent. 

But what must we bear in mind? That the development of 
the equivalent form is only the expression and result of the develop- 
ment of the relative value form. 

102. The primary or isolated relative form of value of one 
commodity, converts some other commodity into an isolated equiva- 
lent. 

The expanded form of relative value, which is the expression 
of one commodity in terms of all other commodities, endows those 
commodities with the character of particular equivalents differing in 
kind. 

And, lastly, why does a particular kind of commodity acquire 
the character of universal equivalent? Because all other commodi- 
ties make it the material in which they uniformly express their 
value. 

103. How is the antagonism between the relative form of 
value, and the equivalent form, developed? The two poles of the 
value form are developed concurrently with this form itself. 

104. Why is it difficult to grasp the polar contrast from the 
first value form-20 yards of linen=l coat? Because, as we read 
this equation backwards or forwards the parts played by the linen 
and the coat are different. 

In the one case, the relative value of the linen is expressed in 
the coat; in the other case the relative value of the coat is expressed 
in the linen. 

Their position in the equation being changeable makes it diffi- 
cult to grasp the polar contrast. 

105. What does form B show us? That only one single com- 
modity can, at a time, completely expand its relative value. 

How does it acquire this expanded form? Only because, and 



36 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



in so far as, all other commodities are, with respect to it, equiva- 
lents. 

What would result from reversing the equation in form B? 
It would convert it into the general form of value C. 

106. What does the general form of value (C) give to the 
world of commodities? A general social relative form of value, because, 
and in so far as, thereby all commodities, except one, are excluded 
from the equivalent form. A single commodity, the linen, appears 
therefore to have acquired the character of direct exchangeability 
with every other commodity, because, and in so far as, this character 
is denied to every other commodity. 

107. The commodity that figures as universal equivalent is, 
on the other hand, excluded from the relative value form. 

If the linen, or any other commodity serving as universal 
equivalent, were at the same time to share in the relative form of 
value, it would have to serve as its own equivalent; we should then 
have 20 yards of linen=20 yards of linen. This tautology expresses 
neither value nor magnitude of value. 

In order to express the relative value of the universal equiva- 
lent, we must rather reverse the form C. 

This equivalent has no relative form of value in common with 
other commodities, but its value is relatively expressed by a never- 
ending series of other commodities. 

Thus the expanded form of value, or form B, shows itself as 
the specific form of relative value for the equivalent commodity. 

3. Transition from the general form of value to the money form. 

108. What is the universal form of value? It is a form of 
value in general. 

What commodity can assume this form? Any commodity. 

On the other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed 
the universal equivalent (form C) this is only because, and in so far 
as, it has been excluded from the rest of all other commodities as 
their equivalent, and that by their own act. 

When does the general form of relative value obtain real con- 
sistency and social validity? From the moment that this exclusion 
becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, and from 
that moment only, does the general form of relative value of the 
world of commodities obtain real consistency and social validity. 

109. What becomes the money form of commodities? The 
particular commodity with whose bodily form the equiualent form is 
thus socially identified. 

What is the social function of that commodity? To play, 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 37 

within the world of commodities, the part of universal equivalent. 

What commodity has attained the position of universal equiva- 
lent? Gold. 

Among the commodities which, in form B, figured as particu- 
lar equivalent of the linen, and in form C, express in common their 
relative values in linen, the foremost place has been obtained by one 
in particular— namely, gold. 

How do we get the money form? In form C we replace the 
linen by gold, and get form D. 

D. The money form. 

20 yards of linen — 

1 coat = 

10 pounds of tea = 2 ounces of gold, or approximately 

40 pounds of coffee— $40.00. Hence the universal equiv- 

1 quarter of corn alent in this country is $. 

1-2 ton of iron = 

X commodity A = J 

110. In passing from form A to form B the changes are fun- 
damental. 

On the other hand, there is no difference between form C and 
D except that, in the latter gold has assumed the equivalent form in 
the place of the linen. 

Gold in form D is, what linen was in form C, the universal 
equivalent. 

The progress consists in this alone, that the character of 
direct and universal exchangeability— in other words, that the uni- 
versal equivalent form— has now, by social custom, become finally 
identified with the substance gold. 

111. Why is gold, with reference to all other commodities, 
money? Only because, it was previously, with reference to them, a 
simple commodity. 

Like all other commodities, it was also capable of serving as an 
equivalent, either as simple equivalent in isolated exchanges, or as 
particular equivalent by the side of others. 

How did gold become the money form? Gradually it began 
to serve, within varying limits, as universal equivalent. 

So soon as it monopolizes this position in the expression of 
value of the world of commodities, it becomes the money commodi- 
ty and then, and not till then, does form D become distinct from 
form C and the general form of value become changed into the 
money form. «; 

112. What is the price form of a commodity? The elemen- 



38 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



tary expression of the relative value of a single commodity, such as 
linen, in terms of a commodity, such as gold, that plays the part of 
money, is the price form of that commodity. 

The price form of the linen is, therefore, 20 yards of linen= 
2 ounces of gold, or if 2 ounces of gold, when coined are $40, then 
20 yards of linen— $40. 

113. What is the difficulty in forming a concept of the money 
form? That of clearly comprehending the universal equivalent 
form, and, as a necessary corollary, the general form of value, form 
C, the latter is deduced from form B, the expanded form of value, 
the essential component element of which, we saw, is form A, 20 
yards of linen—1 coat, or X commodity A=Y commodity B. 

What is the germ of the money form? This simple commodi- 
ty form. 

Section 4. The fetichism of commodities and the secret thereof. 

114. A commodity appears, a first sight, a very trivial thing, 
and easily understood. 

Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, 
abounding in metaphysical subleties, and theological niceties. 

So far as it a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about 
it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by it proper- 
ties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that 
those properties are the product of human labor. 

It is as clear as noon-day that man, by his industry, changes 
the forms of the material furnished by nature in such a way as to, 
make them useful to him. 

The form of wood, for instance, is altered by making a table 
out of it, yet for all that, the table continues to be that common 
every-day thing— wood. 

But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into 
something transcendent. 

It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation 
to other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its 
wooden brains grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than the table- 
turning ever was. 

115. The mystical character of commodities does not origi- 
nate, therefore, in their use-values. 

Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determin- 
ing factors of value. 

- For, in the first place, however varied the useful kinds of 
labor, or productive activities may be, it is a physiological fact that 
they are functions of the human organism, and that each such func- 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 39 

tion, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expendi- 
ture of human brains, nerves, muscles, etc. 

Secondly, with regard to that which forms the ground-work 
for the quantitative determination of value, namely, the duration of 
that expenditure, or the quantity of labor, it is quite clear that there 
is a palpable difference between its quantity and its quality. 

In all states of society, the labor time that it costs to produce 
the means of subsistence must necessarily be of interest to mankind, 
though not of equal interest in different stages of development. 

And, lastly, from the moment that men in any way work for one another, 
their labor assumes a social form. 

How is the equality of all sorts of human labor expressed? 
Objectively— by their products all being equally values. 

What takes the form of the quantity of value of the products 
of labor? The measure of the expenditure of labor power by dura- 
tion of that expenditure. 

Finally, what form does the mutual relation of the producers, 
within which the social character of their labor affirms itself, take? 
The form of a social relation between the products. 

116. Why is a commodity a mysterious thing? Simply be- 
cause the social character of men's labor appear to them as an 
objective character stamped upon the product of that labor; because 
the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is 
presented to them as a social relation existing not between them- 
selves, but between the products of their labor. 

This is the reason why the products of labor become commodi- 
ties, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible 
and imperceptible by the senses. 

In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us 
not as the subjective excitation of the optic nerve, but as the object- 
ive form of something outside the eye itself. 

Note. —The rays of light reflected from an object on the eye 
stimulates the nerves and causes them to vibrate. 

On the inner end of the nerves there are bulbs, in which the 
vibrations discharge. 

This nervous discharge causes a movement of the medulla 
over a certain path on the brain, and produces what we call "the 
image." 

To perceive is to recognize the sense impressions, or nervous 
discharge; we, therefore, perceive, not the object, but the sense im- 
pressions caused by the reflection of light from the object to 
the eye. 



40 CATECHISM OP KARL MAIiX's "CAPITAL. 



But, in the act of seeing, there is, at all evt nl , an actual 
passage of light from one thing to another, from the extenal object 
to the eye. 

There is a physical relation between physical things. 

How is it with commodities? Entirely different. 

There the existence of things as commodities, and the value 
relation between the products of labor which stamps them as com- 
modities, have absolutely no connection with their physical proper- 
ties and with the material relation arising therefrom. 

There it is a definite social relation between men that assumed, in 
their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. 

In order, therefore, to find an anology, we must have recourse 
to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. 

In that world the products of the human brain appear as inde- 
pendent beings endowed with life, and enter into relation both with 
one another and the human race. 

So it is with the world of commodities, with the products of 
men's hands. 

This I call the fetichism which attaches itself to the products 
of labor, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is, 
therefore, inseparable from the production of commodities. 

117. This fetichism of commodities has its origin, as our fore- 
going analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of 
the labor that produces them. 

118. Why do articles, as a general rule, become commodities? 
Only because they are products of the labor of private individuals 
who carry on their work independently of each other. 

The sum total of the labor of these private individuals forms 
the aggregate labor of society. 

Since the producers do not come into social contact with each 
other until they exchange their products, the specific social character 
of each producer's labor does not show itself except in the act of ex- 
change. 

In other words, the labor of the individual asserts itself as 
part of the labor of society only by means of the relation which the 
act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indi- 
rectly, through them, between the producers. 

To the latter, therefore, the relation connecting the labor of 
one individual with the rest appears, not as direct and social rela- 
tions between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material 
relations between persons, and social relations between things. 

It is only by being exchanged that the products of labor 
acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their 



KM0DITIE8 .' .KV. Jl 

varied form of exk" of utilit. . 

This division of a product into a useful thing and a value be- 
comes practical only when exchange has acquired such an e. h 
that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being exchanged, 
and their character as value has to be taken into account before- 
hand during production. 

From this moment the labor of the individual producer ac- 
quires socially a two-fold character. 

On the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labor, 
satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as a part and 
parcel of the collective labor of all. as a branch of the social division 
of labor that has sprung- up spontaneously. 

On the other hand, it cai ' the manifold wants of the 

. idual producer himself only in so far as the mutual exchar. 
bility of all kind ate labor is an established social fact, 

and therefore the private useful labor of each producer ranks on an 
equal with all oth 

The equalization of the most different kinds of labor can be 
the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reduc- 
ing them to their common denominator, namely, expenditure of 
human labor power, or human labor in the abstract. 

The two-fold social character of the labor of the individual 
appears to him, when reflected in his brain, only under the forms 
which are impressed upon the labor in every-day practice by 
the exchange of product 

In this way the character that his own labor possesses of be- 
ing socially useful takes the form of the conditions that the products 
must be not only useful, but useful to others, and the social charac- 
ter that his particular labor has, of being equal to all other kinds of 
labor, takes the form that all the physically different articles that 
are the prod .abor have one common quality, namely, that of 

having value. 

119. Is it beca tee in the product of our labor, articles 

that are the recepticles of homogeneous human labor that we bring 
them into relation with each other as values? On the contr; 
whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different pro- 
ducts, by thai act we also equate, as human labor, the different 
kinds of labol ;ed upon them. 

We are not aware of this, but, neverth e do it. 

Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describ- 
ing it. 

it is value, rather, that converts every product into a social 
> hie. 



42 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

Later on we try to decipher the heiroglyphic, to get behind 
the secret of our social products; for to stamp an object of utility as a value 
is just as much a social product as language. 

The recent scientific discovery that the products of labor, so 
far as they are values, are but material expressions of human labor 
spent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch, in the history of 
the development of the human race, but by no means dissipates the 
mists through which the social character of labor appears to us to be 
an objective character of the products themselves. 

What does this social character of private labor, carried on in- 
dependently, consist in? The equality of every kind of that labor, 
by virtue of its being human labor; which character, therefore, 
assumes in the product the form of value— this fact appears to the 
producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to, to be 
just as real and final as the fact that, after the discovery, by science, 
of the component gases of the air, the atmosphere remained the 
same. 

120. What, first of all, practically concerns producers when 
making an exchange is the question, how much of some other pro- 
duct they get for their own? 

In what proportion the products are exchangeable ? When these 
proportions have— by custom— attained a certain stability, they appear 
to result from the nature of the products, so that, for instance, one ton 
of iron and two ounces of gold, appear as naturally to be of equal 
value, as a pound of gold and a pound of iron— in spite of their dif- 
ferent physical and chemical properties— appear to be of equal 
weight. 

The character of having value, when once impressed upon 
products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and reacting 
upon each other as quantities of value. 

These quantities vary continually, independent of the will, 
foresight, and action of the producers. 

To thern their own social action takes the form of the action 
of the objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by 

them. 

It requires a fully developed production of commodities before, from accumu- 
lated experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up that all the different 
kinds of private labor which are carried on independently of each other, and yet as 
spontaneous developed branches of the social divisiou of labor, are continually be= 
ing reduced to the quantitative proportion in which society requires them. 

And why? Because in the midst of all the accidental and ever fluctuating 
exchange relation between the products, the labor=time socially necessary for their 
production forceably asserts itself like an overriding law of nature. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 43 

The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about 
our ears. 

The determination of the magnitude of value by labor-time 
is, therefore, a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the 
relative value of commodities. 

Its discovery, while removing all appearance of accidentality 
from the determination of the magnitude of the value of pro- 
ducts, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination 
takes place. 

121. What course does man's reflection of social life, and In- 
scientific analysis of these forms, take? Directly the opposite of 
their historical development. 

Where does he begin? With the result of the processes of de- 
velopment ready to hand before him. 

What is necessary before man seeks to decipher the meaning 
of commodities? The character that stamps products as commodi- 
ties, and whose establishment is a necessary preliminary to the cir- 
culation of commodities, have already acquired the stability of 
natural self-understood forms of social life before man seeks to 
decipher, not the historical character, for in his eyes they are immu- 
table, but their meaning. 

What led to the determination of the magnitude of values? 
The analysis of the prices of commodities alone. 

What led to the establishment of their characters as values? 
It was the common expression of all commodities in money. 

What actually conceals, instead of disclosing the social charac- 
ter of private labor, and the social relation between the producers? 
The ultimate money form of the world of commodities. 

When I stated that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, 
because it is the incarnation of abstract human labor, the absurdity 
of the statement is self-evident. 

Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots compare 
those articles with linen, or what is the same thing, with gold and 
silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the relation between 
their private labor and the collective labor of society in the same 
absurd forms. 

122. The catagories of bourgeois economy consists of such 
like forms. 

They are forms of thought expressing with social validity 
the conditions and relations of a definite historically determined 
mode of production— namely, the production of commodities. 

The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necro- 
mancy that surrounds the products of labor as long as they take the 



II C \ tkciiism OF I IARL m ak\ 'S CAPITAL." 

form of commodities, vanishes, therefore, bo booii as we come to 
other forms of production. 

VS.). Since Robinson Crusoe's experience is a favorite theme 
with political economists, let ns take a look at him on his island. 

Moderate though he he, yet some few wants he has to satisfy, 
and must therefore do a little work of various sorts, such as making- 
tools, and furniture, taming - goats, fishing and hunting, of his 
prayers and the like we will take no account, since they are a pleas- 
ure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. 

In spite of the variety of his work, he knows that his labor, 
whatever its form, is but, the activity of one and the same Robinson 
and consequently consists of nothing but different modes of human 
labor. 

Necessity compels him to apportion his time accurately !><• 
tween his different kinds of work. Whether one kind occupies a 
greater space in his general activity than another depends upon the 
difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to overcome in attain- 
ing the useful effect aimed at. 

This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and hav- 
ing rescued a watch, ledger, pen and ink, from the wreck, com- 
mences like a true born Britton, to keep a set of books. 

His stock-book consists of a list of the objects of utility that 
belong to him, of the operations necessary for their production, and, 
lastly, the labor time that definite quantities of these objects have, 
on an average, cost him. 

All the relations between Robinson and the objects that form 
his wealth, of his own.creation, are here so simple and clear as to be 
intelligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. 

124. Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson's island, 
bathed in light, to the European Middle Ages, shrouded in darkness. 

Here, instead of the independent man, we find everyone de- 
pendent— serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen and clergy. 

Personal dependence here characterizes the social relations of 
production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organized 
on the basis of that production. > 

But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the 
ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labor and its pro- 
ducts to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. 

They take the shape, in the transactions of society of service 
in kind and payment in kind. 

Here the particular and natural form of labor, and not as 
in a society based on the production of commodities, its general ab- 
stract form is the immediate social form of labor. 



KY. 45 

Con ■ labor Lb , properly measured by time 

commodity producing labor; but every serf knows that what he 
spends in the e of his lord is a definite quantity of his < 

.1 labor-power. 

The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact 
than his bias 

I matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by 
the different classes of people in this , the social relations be- 

tween individuals in the performance of their labor appear, at all 
events, as their own mutual persona] relations, and are not disguised 
under the social relations between the products of labor. 

125. Y'jc an example of labor in common or directly associat- 
ed labor, we have no occasion to go back to that spontaneously 
developed form which we find on the threshold of the history of civ- 
ilized rac< 

We have one close at hand in the patriarchal industry of a 
ant family, that produce corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing 
for hor/v 

These different articles are, as regards the family, so many 
products of its labor, but as between themselves they are not corn- 
modi' 

The different kinds of labor, such as tillage, cattle tending, 
spinning, weaving, and making clothes, which result in the various 
products, are in themselves, and such as they are, direct social func- 
.. because functions of the family; which, just as much as a 
society based on the production of commodities, posseses a spontan- 
eously-developed ion of labor. 

The distribution of the work within the family, and the regu- 
lation of the labor-time of the several members, depends as well 
upon difference of age and sex as upon natural conditions varying 
with the ses 

The labor power of each individual, by its very nature, oper- 

in this case merely as a definite portion of the whole labor 
power of the family; and therefore the expenditure of individual 
labor power by its duration appears here, by its very nature, a a 
al character of their labor. 

126. Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of a change, a 
community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the 

. :" production in common, in which the labor power of all the 
different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labor pow- 
the community. 

All the characteristics of Robinson's labor is here repeated, 
but with this difference, that they are social instead of individual. 



46 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S ' ' CAPITAL. " 

Everything produced by him was the result of his own per- 
sonal labor, and, therefore, simply an article of use for himself. 

The total product of our community is a social product. 

One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains 
social. 

But another portion is consumed by the members as means of 
subsistence. 

A distribution of this portion among them is consequently 
necessary. 

The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive 
organization of the community, and the historical development at- 
tained by the producers. 

We will assume, but merely for a parallel with the production 
of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the 
means of subsistence is determined by his labor time. 

Labor time would, in this case, play a double part; its appor- 
tionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the 
proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done 
and the various wants of the community. 

On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion 
of the common labor borne by each individual, and his share in the 
total part of the product destined for individual consumption. 

The social relation of the individual producers, with regard 
both to their labor and to its products, are, in this case, perfectly 
simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production, 
but also to distribution. 

127. The religious world is but a reflex of the real world. 

And for a society based upon the production of commodities, 
in which the producers in general enter into social relations with 
one another by treating their products as commodities and values, 
whereby they reduce their individual private labor to the standard 
of homeogeneous human labor— for such a society Christianity with 
its cultas of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois develop- 
ments, protestanism, deism, etc. , is the most fitting form of religion. 

In the ancient Asiatic, and other ancient modes of production, 
we find that the conversion of products into commodities, and there- 
fore the conversion of men into producers of commodities, holds a 
subordinate place, which, however, increases in proportion as primi- 
tive communities approaches nearer and nearer to their dissolution. 

Trading nations, properly so-called, exist in the ancient world 
only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus, in the intermuda, or 
like the Jews in the pores of Polish society. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 4? 

These ancient social organisms of production are, as compared 
with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. 

But they are founded either on the immature development of 
man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that 
unites him with his fellow-men in a primitive tribal community, or 
upon direct relation of subjection. 

They can arise and exist only when the development of the 
productive power of labor has not risen beyond a low stage, and, 
when, therefore, the social relation within the sphere of material 
life between man and man, and between man and nature, are corre- 
spondingly narrow. 

This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of nature, 
and in the other elements of the popular religions. 

The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally 
vanish when the practical relations of every=day life offer none but perfectly intel= 
ligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow=men and to nature. 

128. The life process of society, which is based on the process of materi- 
al production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production 
of freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with 
a settled plan. 

This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or set 
of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long 
and painful process of development. 

129. Political economy has, indeed, analyzed, however incom- 
pletely, value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies behind 
these forms. 

But it has never once asked the question why labor is repre- 
sented by the value of its product and labor time by the magnitude 
of that value. 

These formulae, which bear stamped upon them, in unmistakable letters, 
that they belong to a state of society in which the process of production has the 
mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him. Such formula? appear, 
to the bourgeois intellect, to be as much a self-evident necessity im- 
posed by nature as productive labor itself. • 

Hence forms of production that preceded the bourgeois form 
are treated by the bourgeois in much the same way as the Fathers of 
the Church treated pre-Christian religions. 

130. To what extent some economists are misled by the 
objective appearance of the social characteristics of labor, is 
shown, among other ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the 
part played by nature in the formation of exchange-value. 

Since exchange-value is a definite social manner of expressing 



48 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



the amount of labor bestowed upon an object, nature has no more to 
do with it than it has in fixing the course of exchange. 

131. The mode of production in which the product takes the 
form of commodities, or is produced directly for exchange, is the 
most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. 

It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, 
though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as 
now-a-days. 

Hence its Fetich character is comparatively easy to be seen 
through. 

But ;when we come to more concrete forms, even this appear- 
ance of simplicity vanishes. 

Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it, gold 
and silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social rela- 
tion between producers, but mere natural objects, with strange 
social properties. 

And modern economy, which looks down with such disdain on 
the monetary system, does not its superstition come out as clear as 
noon-day whenever it treats of capital? How long is it since econo- 
my discarded the physiocratic illusion that rents grew out of the 
soil, and not out of society. 

132. But not to anticipate we will content ourselves with yet 
another example relating to the commodity form. 

Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Our 
use-value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as 
objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects is our value. 
Our natural intercourse as commodities proves it. 

Now listen how those commodities speak through the mouth 
of the economists: 

"Value (i. e., exchange-value) is a property of things, riches 
(i, e., use- value) of man. 

"Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges; riches 
do not." 

Riches (use- value) are the attribute of men; value is the attri- 
bute of commodities. 

A man or a community is rich; a pearl or a diamond is valua- 
ble. 

A pearl or a diamond is valuable as a pearl or a diamond. 

So far, no chemist has ever discovered exchange-value in a 
pearl or a diamond. 

The economic discoverers of this chemical element, who, by 
the by, lay special claim to critical acumen, find, however, that the 
use-value belongs to them independently of their material proper- 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 49 

ties, while their value, on the other hand, form a part of them as 
objects. 

What confirms them in this view is the peculiar circumstance 
that the use- value of objects is realized without exchange by means 
of a direct relation between the objects and man, while, on the other 
hand, their value is realized only by exchange; that is, by means of 
a social process. 

Who fails here to call to mind our good friend Dogberry, who 
informs neighbor Seacoal that "to be a well favored man is the gift 
of fortune; but reading and writing comes by nature." 



CHAPTER II. EXCHANGE. 

133. It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and 
make exchange on their own account. We must, therefore, have 
recourse to their guardians, who are also their owners. 

Commodities are things, and therefore without power of re- 
sistence against man. If they are wanting in docility he can use 
force; in other words, he can take possession of them. 

How, then, may these objects enter into relation with each 
other as commodities? Their guardians must place themselves into 
relation as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must be- 
have in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of 
the other and part with his own, except by means of an act done by 
mutual consent. 

And what must they mutually recognize in each other? The 
rights of private proprietors. 

What is this juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in 
a contract, whether such contract be part of a legal system or not? 
It is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real 
economic relation between the two. 

What does this economic relation determine? The subject 
matter comprised in such juridicial act. 

How do the persons exist for one another? Merely as repre- 
sentatives of, and therefore as owners of, commodities. 

In the course of our investigation we shall find, in general, 
that the characters who appear upon the economic stage are but the 
personifications of the economical relations that exists between them. 

134. What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner 
is the fact that it looks upon every other commodity as but the form 
of appearance of its own value. 

A born leveler and a cynic, it is always ready to exchange not 



50 CATECHISM OP KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

only soul, but body, with any and every other commodity, be the 
same more repulsive than Maritornes herself. 

The owner makes up for this lack in a commodity of a sense 
of the concrete by his own five or more senses. 

His commodity possesses for himself no immediate use-value. 

Otherwise he would not bring it to the market. 

It has use- value for others; but for himself its only direct use- 
value is that of being a depository of exchange-value, and conse- 
quently a means of exchange. 

Therefore, he makes up his mind to part with it for commodi- 
ties whose value in use are of service to him. 

All commodities are non-use-values for their owners, and 
use- values for their non-owners. 

Consequently, they must all change hands. 

But this change of hands is what constitutes their exchange, 
and the latter puts them in relation with each other as values, and 
realizes them as values. 

Hence commodities must be realized as values, before they 
can be realized as use-values. 

135. On the other hand, they must show that they are use- 
values before they can be realized as values. 

How is it proved, whether the labor is useful for others, that 
the product will satisfy some want or other, or not? Only by the act 
of exchange. 

136. Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in 
exchange for those commodities whose use-value satisfies some want 
of his. 

Looked at in this way, what is exchange for him? Simply a 
private transaction. 

On the other hand, he desires to realize the value of his com- 
modity; to convert it into some suitable commodity of equal value, 
irrespective of whether his own commodity has or has not any use- 
value for the owner of the other. 

From this point of view, what is exchange for him? A social 
transaction, of a general character. 

But one and the same set of transactions can not be simultan- 
eously, for all owners of commodities, both exclusively private and 
exclusively social and general. 

137. To the owner of a commodity, what is every other com- 
modity, in regard to his own? A particular equivalent. 

What is his own commodity in regard to others? The uni- 
versal equivalent. 

But, since this applies to every owner, there is, in fact, no 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 51 

commodity acting- as universal equivalent, and the relative value of 
commodities possesses no general form under which they can be 
equated as values, and have the magnitude of their values com- 
pared. 

So far, therefore, they do not confront each other as com- 
modities, but only as products or use-values. 

In their difficulty our commodity owners think, like Faust, 
"In the beginning was the act." 

They, therefore, acted and transacted before they thought. 

Instinctively they conform to the laws imposed by the nature 
of commodities. 

How are commodities brought into relation as values, and 
therefore as commodities? Only by comparing them with some 
other commodity as the universal equivalent. That we saw from 
our analysis of a commodity. 

But how can a particular commodity become the universal 
equivalent. Only by a social act. 

How is this act performed? The social action of all other 
commodities set apart the particular commodity in which they al 
represent their values. 

And, what becomes the form of the socially recognized uni- 
versal equivalent? The bodily form of the commodity that is set 
apart to act as the universal equivalent. 

What is the function of this commodity thus excluded from 
the rest? To act as their universal equivalent and it thus becomes 
money. 

138. What is money? A crystal formed of necessity in the 
course of exchange, whereby different products of labor are prac- 
tically equated to one another, and thus by practice are converted 
into commodities. 

What does the historical progress and extension of exchanges 
develop? The contrast latent in commodities between use- value and 
value. 

For what purpose is it necessary to give external expression to 
this contrast? Commercial intercourse. 

What does this urge on? The establishment of an indepen- 
dent form of value, and finds no rest until it is once for all satisfied 
by the differentiation of commodities into commodities and money. 

At the same rate, then, as the conversion of products into 
commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of one 
special commodity into money. 

Note.— From this we may form an estimate of the shrewd- 
ness of the petite bourgeois socialism, which, while perpetuating the 



CATECHISM OF KAKL MARX S 'CAPITAL. 



production of commodities, aims at abolishing the "antagonism" 
between money and commodities, and consequently, at abolishing 
money itself. We might just as well try to retain Catholicism with- 
out the pope. — Zur Kritik. 

139. The direct barter of products attains the elementary 
form of the relative expression of value in one respect, but not in 
another. That form is X commodity A=Y commodity B. 

How is this form, in direct barter, expressed? X use- value 
A=Y use-value B. 

Note.— So long as, instead of two distinct use- values being 
exchanged, a chaotic mass of articles are offered as the equivalent 
of a single article,. which is often the case with savages, even direct 
barter is in its infancy. 

The articles A and B, in this case, are not as yet commodi- 
ties; they become so only by the act of barter. 

When is the first step made by an object of utility towards 
acquiring exchange value? When it forms a non-use- value for its 
owner. 

When does this happen? When it forms a superfluous portion 
of some article required for his immediate use. 

Objects in themselves are external to man, and, consequently, 
alienable by him. 

What is necessary in order that this alienation may be recip- 
rocal? For men, by a tacit understanding, to treat each other as 
private owners of these alienable objects, and by implication as inde- 
pendent individuals. 

But such a state of reciprocal independence has no existence 
in a primitive society based on property in common, whether such a 
society takes the form of a patriarchial family, an ancient Indian 
community, or a Puruvian Inca state. 

Where does the product of labor first begin to become com- 
modities? On the boundaries of such communities, at the point of 
contact with other similar communities, or with members of the 
latter. 

What happens to products when they have become commodi- 
ties in the external relations of a community? They also, by reac- 
tion, become commodities in their internal intercourse. 

What determines their exchange proportions at first? It is a 
mere matter of chance. 

What makes them exchangeable? The desire of their owner 
to alienate them. 

What makes exchange a normal social act? Constant repeti- 
tion of exchange. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 53 

When is the distinction, between the utility of a thing for 
consumption and its utility for the purpose of exchange, established? 
In the course of time some portion, at least, of the product of labor 
must be produced with a special view to exchange. 

From that moment use-value becomes distinguished from its 
exchange value. 

On the other hand, upon what does the proportions in which 
the articles are exchanged depend? Production itself. 

What stamps them as values with definite magnitudes? Cus- 
tom. 

140. What is each commodity, in direct barter, to its owner? 
A direct means of exchange. 

What is it to all other persons? An equivalent, but only in so 
far as it has use-value for them. 

At this stage, therefore, the articles exchanged do not acquire 
a value form independent of their own use-values, or of the individ- 
ual needs of the exchangers. 

The necessity of the value form grows with the increasing 
number and variety of the commodities exchanged. 

The problem and means of solution rise simultaneously. 

What is necessary for the exchange of commodities on a large 
scale? That all the different kinds of commodities be exchangeable 
for and equated to one and the same special article. 

Commodity owners never equate their own commodities to 
those of others, and exchange them on a large scale, without differ- 
ent kinds of commodities belonging to different owners being ex- 
changeble for, and equated as values to, one and the same special 
article. 

What does this last mentioned article become? The equivalent 
of various other commodities, and thus acquires at once, though 
within narrow limits, the character of a general social equivalent. 

Is this character permanent to one article? No; it comes and 
goes with the momentary social act that called it into life. 

In turns and transiently it attaches itself first to this and then 
to that commodity. 

How does it act, with the development of exchange? It fixes 
itself firmly and exclusively to particular sorts of commodities, and 
becomes crystalized by becoming the money form. 

What determines the particular commodity to which it sticks 
at first? Mere accident. 

What are the circumstances, whose influence decides, what 
article will take on the money-form? The money-form attaches 
itself either to the most important article of exchange from outside 



54 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

—and these, in fact, are primitive and natural forms in which the 
exchange-value of home products find expression— or else it attaches 
itself to the object of utility that form, like cattle, the chief portion 
of indigeneous alienable wealth. 

Who are the first to develop the money-form? The nomadic 
races. 

Why? Because all their worldly goods consist of moveable 
objects, and are, therefore, directly alienable; and because their 
mode of life, by continually bringing them in contact with foreign 
communities, solicits the exchange of products. 

Man has often made man himself, under the form of slaves, 
serve as primitive material for money, but has never used land for 
that purpose. 

Where could such an idea spring up? Only in a bourgeois 
society already well developed. 

It dates from the last third of the seventeenth century, and 
the first attempt to put it in practice on a national scale was made a 
century afterward, during the French bourgeois revolution. 

141. How does the commodity best fitted, by nature, to per- 
form the social function of a universal equivalent, attain that end? 
In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the values of 
commodities more and more expand into an embodiment of human 
labor in the abstract, in the same proportion the character of money 
attaches itself to commodities best fitted to perform the social func- 
tion of a universal equivalent. 

What commodities are these? The precious metals. 

142. The truth of the proposition that "although gold and 
silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver" 
is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of these metals for 
the function of money. 

Up to this point, however, we are acquainted with only one 
function of money; namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of 
the values of commodities, or as the material in which the magnitude 
of their values are socially expressed. 

What material will give an adequate form of the manifesta- 
tion of value— a fit embodiment of abstract, undifferentiated, and, 
therefore, equal human labor? That material alone, whose every 
sample exhibits the same uniform quality. 

What other quality must it also possess? Since the difference 
between the magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, it must be 
divisible at will, and equally capable of being united. 

What materials possess these qualities? Gold and silver. 

143. What does the use- value of money become? Two-fold. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 55 

In addition to its special use-value as a commodity (gold, for in- 
stance, serving to stop teeth, to form the raw materials of articles 
of luxury, etc. ) , it acquires a formal use-value, originating in its 
special social function. 

How do commodities act as regards the universal equivalent? 
They play the part of particular commodities. 

Since all commodities are mere equivalents of money, the lat- 
ter being their universal equivalent, they with regard to the latter 
as the universal commodity, play the parts of particular com- 
modities. 

144. We have seen that the money form is but the reflex, 
thrown upon one single commodity, of the value relations between 
all the rest. 

That money is a commodity is, therefore, a new discovery 
only for those who, when they analyze it, start from its fully-devel- 
oped shape. 

The act of exchange gives to the commodity converted into 
money, not its value, but its specific value-form. 

What has the confounding of these two distinct things, led 
some writers to hold? That the value of gold and silver is imag- 
inary. 

Note.— Locke says: "The universal consent of mankind 
gives to silver on account of its qualities which made it suitable for 
money, an imaginary value." 

Law, on the other hand, "How could different nations give an 
imaginary value to any single thing * * * or how could their 
imaginary value maintain itself. ?" 

But the following shows how little he himself knew about the 
matter: "Silver was exchanged in proportion to the value in use it 
possessed, consequently, in proportion to its real value. By its 
adoption as money it received an additional value. (Jean Law in 
E Daires edit, of Economic Financiers du xviii Siecle, p. 470. ) 

What gave rise to that other mistaken notion that money 
itself is a mere symbol of value? The fact that in certain functions 
it can be replaced by mere symbols. 

Nevertheless, under this error lurked the presentiment that 
the money-form of an object is not an inseparable part of that object, 
but is simply the form under which certain social relations manifest 
themselves. 

In what sense is every commodity a symbol of value? In so 
far as it is value, it is only the material envelop of the human labor 
spent upon it. 



56 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 

But, if it be declared that the social characters assumed by 
objects, or the material forms assumed by the social qualities of 
labor under the regime of a definite mode of production, are mere 
symbols, it is in the same breath also declared that these character- 
istics are arbitrary fictions sanctioned by the so-called universal con- 
sent of mankind. 

This suited the mode of explanation in favor during the 

eighteenth century. 

Unable to account for the origin of the puzzling forms assum- 
ed by social relations between man and man, people sought to denude 
them of their strange appearance by ascribing to them a conventional 

origin. 

145. It has already been remarked above that the equivalent 

form of a commodity does not imply the determination of the magni- 
tude of its value. 

Therefore, although we may be aware that gold is money, and 
consequently directly exchangeable for all other commodities, yet that 
fact by no means tell us how much 10 pound, for instance, of gold, 

is worth. 

Money, like every other commodity, cannot express the mag- 
nitude of its value except relatively in other commodities. 

Then how is the the value of money determined? By the labor 
time required for its production. 

And how is it expressed? By the quantity of any other com- 
modity that costs the same amount of labor time. 

Where does such quantitative determination take place? At 
the source of its production— the mines. 

How does it take place? By means of barter. When it steps 
into circulation as money its value is already given. 

In the last decades of the seventeenth century, it had already 
been shown that money is a commodity, but this step marks only the 

infancy of the analysis. 

The difficulty lies, not in comprehending that money is a com- 
modity, but in discovering how, why, and by what means a commodity 
becomes money. 

146. Summary.— We have already seen, from the most ele- 
mentary expression of value, X commodity A=^Y commodity B, that 
the object in which the magnitude of the value of another object is 
represented appears to have the equivalent form independent of this 
relation as a social property given to it by nature. 

We follow up this false appearance to its final establishment, 
which is complete so soon as the universal equivalent form becomes 
identified with the bodily form of a particular commodity, and thus 
crystalized into the money-form. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 57 

What appears to happen is not that gold becomes money in con- 
sequence of all other commodities expressing their values in it, but on 
the contrary, that all other commodities express their value in gold 
because it is money. 

The intermediate steps vanish in the results and leave no 
trace behind. 

Commodities find their own value already represented without 
any initiation on their part, in another commodity existing in com- 
pany with them. 

These objects, gold and silver, just as they come out of the 
bowels of the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all hu- 
man labor. 

Hence the magic of money. 

In the form of society now under consideration the behavior 
of men in the social process of production is purely atomic. 

Hence their relation to each other in production assumes a 
material character independent of their control and conscious indi- 
vidual action. 

These facts manifest themselves at first by products taking 
the form of commodities. 

We have seen how the progressive development of a society 
of commodity producers stamps one privileged commodity with the 
character of money. 

Hence the riddle presented by money is but the riddle pre- 
sented by commodities, only it now strikes us in it most glaring 
form. 



CHAPTER III. MONEY, OR THE CIRCULATION 
OF COMMODITIES. 

Section 1. The measure of values. 

147. Throughout this work I assume, for the sake of simplic- 
ity, gold as the money commodity. 

What is the first chief function of money? To supply com- 
modities with the material for the expression of their values, or to 
represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, 
qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. 

It thus serves as a universal measure of value. 

And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent 
commodity par excellance, become money. 

148. Is it money that renders commodities commensurable? 



58 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX 'S "(CAPITAL." 

Just on the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are 
realized human labor, and therefore commensurable, that their val- 
ues can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and 
the latter be converted into the common measure of their value; that 
is, into money. 

What is money as the measure of value? It is the phenome- 
nal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of 
value which is imminent in commodities— labor-time. 

Note. —The question, why does not money directly represent 
labor-time, so that a piece of paper may represent, for instance, X 
hours labor? Is at bottom the same as the question why, given the 
production of commodities, must products take the form of com- 
modities? This is evident, since their taking the form of commodi- 
ties implies their differentiation into commodities and money, or why 
cannot private labor— labor for the account of private individuals- 
be treated as its opposite, immediate social labor? I have elsewhere 
examined thoroughly the Utopian idea of "paper money," in a socie- 
ty founded on the production of commodities. 

On this point I will only say, further, that Owens' "labor 
money," for instance, is no more "money" than a ticket for the 
theater. Owen presupposes directly associated labor, a form of pro- 
duction that is entirely inconsistent with production of commodities. 

The certificate of labor is merely evidence of the part taken by 
the individual in the common labor, and of his rights to a certain 
portion of the common produce destined for consumption. But, it 
never inters into Owens' head to presuppose the production of com- 
modities, and at the same time, by juggling with money, to try to 
evade the necessary conditions of that production. 

149. What is the money-form or price of a commodity? The 
expression of the value of a commodity in gold— X commodity A=Y 
money commodity. 

What is now sufficient to express the value of a commodity in 
a socially valid manner? A single equation, such as 1-2 ton of iron 
=2 ounces of gold. 

Why is there no longer any need for this equation to figure as 
a link in the equations that express the values of all other commodi- 
ties? Because the equivalent now has the character of money. 

What has the general form of relative value resumed? Its 
original shape of isolated relative value. 

What, on the other hand, has the endless series of equations, 
the expanded expressions of relative value, become? The form pe- 
culiar to the relative value of the money commodity. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 59 

The series itself, too, is now given, and has social recognition 
in prices of actual commodities. 

How do we find the magnitude of the value of money express- 
ed? In all sorts of commodities, by reading the quotation of the price 
list backwards. 

What is the price of money? It has no price. 

What would we have to do, in order to put it on an equal foot- 
ing with all other commodities in this respect? Equate it to itself, 
which is no expression of value. 

150. What is the price, or money-form of commodities? Like 
the form of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpa- 
ble bodily form; it is therefore a purely ideal or mental form. 

How is value that has actual existence in commodities made 
ideally perceptible? By their equation with gold. 

Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn has actual 
existence in these very articles; it is ideally made perceptible by 
their equality with gold— a relation that, so to say, exists only in 
their own heads. 

How are the prices of commodities communicated to the out- 
side world? Their owner must lend them his tongue or hang a 
ticket on them. 

Since the expression of the value of commodities in gold is 
merely an ideal act, what may we use for that purpose? Imaginary 
or ideal money. 

When and how do we employ money as imaginary or ideal 
money? When estimating and measuring the value of goods. 

Every trader knows that he is far from having turned his 
goods into money when he has expressed their value in a price, or 
imaginary money, and that it does not require the least bit of gold 
to estimate, in that metal, millions of dollars worth of goods. 

This circumstance has given rise to the wildest theories. 

But, although the money that performs the function of a 
measure of values is only ideal money, upon what does price depend? 
Entirely upon the actual substance that is money. 

How can we measure the value of commodities by an imagin- 
ary thing? The value— the quantity of human labor— contained in a 
ton of iron is expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the 
money commodity as contains the same amount of labor as the iron. 

Would it cut any figure in the price, whether we use gold, sil- 
ver or copper as the measure of value of the iron? The value of the 
iron would be expressed by very different prices, or will be repre- 
sented by very different quantities of these metals respectively. 

151. What would the result be, if we have two different meas- 



60 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



ures of value, such as gold and silver, at the same time? All com- 
modities would have two prices, a gold price and a silver price. 

Note.— This did really occur in the seventies; you could pur- 
chase, from the grocer, one dollar's worth of goods, give a twenty 
dollar gold piece, and he would give you back twenty dollars in 
silver. 

The prices of goods were $19 in gold and $20 in silver. 

All notes were made payable in gold; $100 in gold were worth 
$105 in silver. 

These exist quietly side by side so long as the ratio of the val- 
ue of silver to that of gold remain unchanged— say 16 to 1. 

Every change in the ratio disturbs the ratio which exists be- 
tween the gold prices and the silver prices of commodities, and thus 
proves the fact that a double standard of value is inconsistent with 
the function of a standard. 

152. How does the value of all commodities become magni- 
tudes of the same denomination? Commodities with definite prices 
present themselves under the form:— a commodity A=X gold; b 
commodity B=Z gold; c commodity C=Y gold, etc. ; where a. b. c. 
represent definite quantities of commodities A B C; XZ Y represent 
definite quantities of gold. 

The value of these commodities are, therefore, changed in 
imagination into so many different quantities of gold. 

Hence in spite of the confusing variety of the commodities 
themselves, their values become magnitudes of the same denomina- 
tion—gold magnitudes. 

They are now capable of being compared with each other and 
measured, and the want becomes technically felt of comparing them 
with some fixed quantity of gold as a unit of measure. 

This unit, by subsequent divisions into aliquot parts, becomes 
itself the standard or scale. 

Before they become money, gold, silver and copper already 
possess such standard of measures in their standards of weight; so 
that, for example, a pound weight, while serving as the unit, is, on 
the one hand, divisible into ounces, and on the other hand, may be 
combined to make up hundred weights. 

It is owing to this that in all the metalic currencies the names 
given to the standards of money were originally taken from their 
pre-existing standards of weight. 

Two functions of money. 

153. As a measure of value and a standard of price, money has twr 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 61 

entirely different functions to perform. 

What is money as a measure of value? The socially recogniz- 
ed incarnation of human labor. 

What is money as a standard of price? A fixed weight of 
metal. 

How does money act as a measure of value? It converts the 
values of all the manifold commodities into prices, into imaginary 
quantities of gold. 

How does money act as a standard of price? It measures 
those quantities of gold. 

How does the measure of value measure commodities? Con- 
sidered as values. 

How does the standard of price measure the quantities of 
gold? By a unit quantity of gold. 

Not the value of one quantity of gold by the weight of an- 
other. 

What is necessary to make gold a standard of price? To fix 
upon a certain weight as a unit. 

In this, as in all other cases, of measuring quantities of the 
same denomination, the establishment of an unvarying unit is all 
important. 

Hence, the less the unit is subject to variation, so much the 
better does the standard of price fulfill its office. 

But only in so far as it is itself the product of labor, and, 
therefore, potentially variable in value, can gold serve as a measure 
of value. 

154. Does a change in the value of gold, in any way affect 
its function as a standard of price? None whatever; for no matter 
how this value varies the proportions between the values of differ- 
erent quantities remain constant. 

However great the fall in its value, 12 ounces of gold still con- 
tain 12 times the value of one ounce, and in prices the only thing 
considered is the relation between different quantities of gold. 

Since no rise or fall in the value of gold can alter its weight, 
no alteration can take place in its aliquot parts. 

Thus gold always renders the same service as an invariable 
standard of price, however much its value may vary. 

155. In the second place, a change in the value of gold does 
not interfere with its function as a measure of value. 

The change affects all commodities simultaneously, and, therefore, other 
things being equal! leaves their relative value between themselves unaltered, aN 
though those values are no.v expressed in higher or lower gold prices. 

156. Just as when we estimate the value of any commodity 



62 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

by a definite quantity of the use- value of some other commodity, so 
in estimating the former in gold, we assume nothing more than that 
the production of a given quantity of gold costs, at the given period, 
a given amount of human labor. 

As regards the fluctuations of prices generally, they are sub- 
jected to the laws of relative value investigated in a former chapter. 

157. How may a general rise in the prices of commodites 
occur? Only, either from a rise in their value, the value of money 
remaining constant, or from a fall in the value of money, the value 
of commodities remaining constant. 

How may a general fall in the prices of commodities occur? 
Only from a fall in the value of commodities, the value of gold 
remaining constant, or from a rise in the value of money, the value 
commodities remaining constant. 

It therefore by no means follows that a rise in the value of 
money necessarily implies a proportional fall in the prices of com- 
modities; or that a fall in the value of money implies a proportional 
rise in prices. 

If their value rise slower or faster than that of money, the 
fall or rise in their prices will be determined by the difference 
between the change in their value and that of the money, and so on. 

Let us go back to the consideration of the price-form. 

158. By degrees there arises a discrepancy between the cur- 
rent money names and the the various weights of the precious metal 
figuring as money, and the actual weight which those names origin- 
ally represented. 

This discrepancy is the result of historical causes, among the 
chief are: 

First. —The importation of foreign money into an imperfectly 
developed community. 

This happened in Rome in its early days, where gold and sil- 
ver coin circulated at first as foreign commodities. 

The names of those foreign coins never coincided with that of 
the indigeneous weights. 

Second. —As wealth increases, the less precious metals are 
thrust out by the more precious from their place as a measure of 
value— copper by silver, silver by gold— however much this order of 
sequence may be in contradiction with poetical chronology. 

The word pound, for instance, was the money name given to 
an actual pound weight of silver. 

» When gold replaced silver as a measure of value, the same 
name was applied according to the ratio between the values of silver 
and gold; to, perhaps, one-fifteenth part of a pound of gold. 



' OMMODITIES AND MONEY. 

The word pound, as a money name, thus became differentiated 
from the same word as a weight name. 

Note.— It is thus that the pound sterling- in English denotes 
less than one-third of its original weight, the pound Scot, before the 
anion, only one-thirty-sixth; the French livre one-seventy-fourth; 
the Spanish maravedi less than one-thousandth; and the Portuguese 
rei a still smaller fraction. 

Third. —The debasing of money carried on for centuries by 
kings and princes to such an extent that nothing, in fact, remained 
but the names. 

159. These historical causes convert the separation of the 
money-name from the weight name into an established habit with 
the community. 

Since the standard of money is, on the one hand, purely con- 
ventional, and must, on the other hand, find general acceptance, it 
is in the end regulated by law. 

A given weight of one of the precious metals, an ounce of 
gold, for instance, becomes officially divided into aliquot parts, with 
legally bestowed names, such as pounds, dollars, and so forth. 

These aliquot parts, which henceforth serve as units of money, 
are then subdivided into other aliquot parts, with legal names such 
as shilling, penny, etc. 

Both before and after these divisions are made a definite 
weight of metal is the standard of metallic money. 

The sole alteration consists in the subdivision and denomi- 
nation. 

160. The price, or quantity of gold, into which the value of 
commodities are ideally changed, are, therefore, expressed in the 
names of coins; or in the legally valid names of the subdivisions of 
the gold standard. 

Hence, instead of saying: a quarter of wheat is worth an 
ounce of gold, we say it is worth £3, 17s, 10 l-2d. 

In this way commodities express by their prices how much 
they are worth, and money serves as money of account whenever it 
is a question of fixing the value of an article in its money-form. 

161. The name of a thing is something different from the 
qualities of that thing. 

I know nothing of a man by knowing that his name is Jacob. 

In the same way with regard to money— every trace of a 
value relation oisappears in the name dollar, pound, franc, du- 
cat, etc. 

The confusion caused by attributing a hidden meaning to 



(i4 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

these cabalistic signs is all the greater because their money-names 
express both the values of commodities and, at the same time, ali- 
quot parts of the weight of the metal that is in the standard of 
money. 

On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary that value, in 
order that it may be distinguished from the various bodily forms 
of commodities, should assume this material and unmeaning, but, at 
the same time, purely social form. 

162. What is price? The money-name of the labor realized 
in a commodity. 

Hence, the expression of the equivalence of a commodity with 
the sum of money constituting its price, is tautology just as in gen- 
eral the expression of the relative value of a commodity is a state- 
ment of the equivalence of two commodities. 

What is price the exponent of? The exchange ratio of a 
commodity with money. 

Although price, being the exponent of the magnitude of a 
commodity's value, is the exponent of its exchange ratio with 
money, it does not follow that the exponent of this exchange ratio 
is necessarily the exponent of the commodities value. 

Suppose two equal quantities of socially necessary labor to be 
respectfully represented by one quarter of wheat and £2. 

£2 is the expression in money of the magnitude of the value 
of the quarter of wheat, or is its price. 

If now circumstances allow of this price being raised to £3, or 
compel it to be reduced to £1, then, although £1 and £3 may be too 
small or too great to properly express the magnitude of the wheat's 
value, nevertheless they are its price. 

For they are, in the first place, the form under which its val- 
ue appears, that is money; and, in the second place, the exponent 
of its exchange ratio with money. 

If the condition of production, in other words, if the product- 
ive power of labor remain constant, the same amount of social labor 
time must, both before and after the change in price, be expended 
in the production of a quarter of wheat. 

This circumstance depends neither on the will of the wheat 
producers nor that of the owners of other commodities. 

163. What does magnitude of value express? A relation of 
social production. 

It expresses the relation that necessarily exists between a cer- 
tain article and the portion of the total labor-time of society required 
to produce it. 

As soon as magnitude of value is converted into price, the 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 65 

above necessary relation takes the shape of a more or less accidental 
exchange ratio between a single commodity and another, the money 
commodity. 

But this exchange ratio may express either the magnitude of 
the commodity's value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that 
value, for which, according to circumstances it may be parted with. 

The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity between 
price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from 
the latter is inherent in the price-form itself. 

This is no defect, but on the contrary, admirably adapts the price=form to a 
mode of production whose inherent laws impose themselves only as the means of 
apparently lawless irregularities that compensate one another. 

164. The price-form, however, is not only compatible with 
the possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude of 
value and price, that is between the former and money, but it may 
also conceal quantitative inconsistency— so much so that although 
money is nothing but the value-form of commodities, prices cease 
altogether to express value. 

Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as con- 
science, honor, etc. , are capable of being offered for sale by their 
holders, and acquiring, through their price, the form of commodi- 
ties. 

Hence an object may have a price without having value. 

The price in this case is imaginary, like certain quantities in 
mathematics. 

On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes 
conceal either a direct or an indirect real value-relation; for instance 
the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no 
human labor has been incorporated in it. 

165. What does price express? Price, like relative value in 
general, expresses the value of a commodity; for example, a ton of 
iron, by stating that a given quantity of the equivalent, for example 
an ounce of gold, is directly exchangeable for iron. 

What must a commodity do in order to act effectually as ex- 
change value in practice? Quit its bodily shape, transform itself 
from mere imaginary into real gold, although to the commodity such 
transubstantiation may be more difficult than the Hegelian "con- 
cept" the transition from "necessity" to "freedom" or to a lobster 
the casting of his shell, or to St. Jerome the putting off of old 
Adam. 

Note.— Jerome had to wrestle hard, not only in his youth 
with the bodily flesh, as shown by his fight in the desert with the 
handsome woman of his imagination, but also in his old age with the 



66 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



spiritual flesh. "I thought," he says, "I was in the spirit before 
the Judge of the universe. " "Who art thou," asked a voice. "I 
am a Christian." "Thou liest," thundered back the Judge; "Thou 
art naught but a Ciceronian." 

Though a commodity may, side by side with its actual form 
(iron, for instance,) take in our imagination the form of gold, yet it 
cannot at the same time actually be both iron and gold. 

To fix its price it is sufficient to equate it to gold in imagina- 
tion. 

But to render its owner the service of a universal equivalent, 
it must be actually replaced by gold. 

If the owner of the iron were to go to the owner of some 
other commodity offered for exchange, and were to refer him to the 
price of the iron as proof that it was already money, he would get 
the same answer as St. Peter gave in heaven to Dante, when the 
latter recited the creed— "Assai bene e trascorsa. " 

That's all very well, you have the proper alloy and the legal 
weight, but have you got it in your pocket? 

166. A price, therefore, implies both that a commodity is ex- 
changeable for money, and also that it must be so exchanged. 

On the other hand, gold serves as an ideal measure of value 
only because it has already, in the process of exchange, established 
itself as the money commodity. 

Under the ideal measure of value, there lurks the hard cash. 

What has our analysis shown a commodity to be? An object 
outside us, that, by its properties satisfies some human want, that 
is the product of human labor, and placed in exchange relation with 
other commodities. 

What are the elements of a commodity? Matter and labor. 

What is most essential to a commodity? Being placed in the 
exchange relation. 

Why so? Because a thing may be the product of human 
labor, a useful article, and if produced only for use, and not put in 
exchange relation it is not a commodity. 

Being placed in, or being produced with a view of, exchange 
alone makes it a commodity. 

On the other hand, a thing that has none of the properties of 
a commodity,— is not the product of labor,— take the form of a com- 
modity on being exchanged for a commodity, that is money. 

What has our analysis shown value to be? Simply a mode of 
expression. 

It expresses homogeneous labor in the abstract. 

Magnitude of value expresses a definite quantity of value. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 67 



The magnitude of value is determined by the amount of labor- 
time socially necessary to produce the necessary quantity of an arti- 
cle to satisfy the wants of society. 

What has our analysis shown price to be? The money-name 
for the labor embodied in a commodity. 

It is the exponent of the exchange ratio between a single com- 
modity and money. 

It may or may not, according to circumstances represent the 
real value of an article. 

It is the ideal value form. 

What has our analysis shown regarding the law that regulates 
prices? The law that governs prices, or the exchange proportions of 
commodities, is value. 

Note.— To illustrate this seeming contradiction, let us take a 
physical law, for Marx says: 

1 'The law of value is in economics what the law of gravity 
is in physics," 

While all commodites are subject to the law of value, just as 
all bodies are subject to the law of gravitation, there are in both 
cases perturbations, which, when examined, afford 'further proof of 
the truth and universality of the law. 

For example according to the law of gravity, all bodies raised 
in the air, fall to the earth in a direct line with its center. 

Yet if the wind blows, the line of descent of the falling body, 
will be more or less obliqe, according to the strength of the wind. 
A projectile describes a parabola which is the "resultant" of the 
force of projection and the force of gravity, variously modified by 
the resistance of the air, the form and density of the missile, and 
other factors. A balloon filled with a gas lighter than air rises in 
the air instead of falling, but in a vacum it falls. 

Again, in the air a piece of iron falls much more swiftly than a 
feather, but in a vacum all bodies fall at the same rate of speed, etc. 
Not only are all these apparent "contradictions" readily explained, 
but the great perturbations in the heavens, examined in the light of 
the law of gravity, have enabled astronomers to discover the location 
and motion of planets and stars, whose existence was previously un- 
suspected. 

Again, a plumb bob, we say, points to the center of gravity. 
Now everyone knows that a plumb bob is seldom at rest, it mostly 
swings to and fro. 

A force, say the hand of a person, or the wind, moves the 
plumb bob in the direction in which the force is applied, but gravity 
asserts itself and pulls it back, so soon as the force is removed, not 



68 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



only to the center, but past it, and so it will swing to and fro until 
the force stored up in it is exhausted, and the bob will point to the 
center of gravtity. 

Now if we take the distance and number of swings made by 
the bob, on each side of the center line, we will find one equals the 
other, and that during the struggle between the force and resistance 
(gravity), gravity had at least maintained an average of center in 
spite of the disturbance. And it is this deviation that proves grav- 
ity to be the governing power. 

Likewise, according to the law of value, commodities ex- 
change for each other in proportion to the amount of socially neces- 
sary labor embodied in them respectively. 

But the capitalistic wind of "supply and demand," ranging 
from a breeze in ordinary times to a tornado in a crisis, disturbs the 
proportion according to its strength. 

Yet the law of value asserts itself, chiefly through the rise 
and fall of prices, which in economics correspond to the oscillations 
of the pendulum in physics. 

If the swing of the market is less regular than that of the 
pendulum, it is because of the many capitalistic disturbances besides 
the so-called "law of supply and demand." 

Were our statistics as honest, and perfect as the data upon 
which the astronomer makes his calculations, every change of value, 
normal or abnormal— that is resulting from some change in the 
method of production, in the means of transportation, in the availa- 
bility of material, etc., on the one hand, could be traced to its 
source or sources, despite the complexity of the capitalist machine, 
the multiplicity and varability of the disturbing forces inherent to or 
evolved by capital itself, we would find the law of exchange value 
supreme. — Lucien Sanial in "Value, Price and Profit." 

Section 2. The medium of circulation. 

a. The metamorphoses of commodities. 

167. We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of com- 
modities implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. 

The differentiation of commodities into commodities and money 
does not sweep away these inconsistencies. 

What does it accomplish? It develops a form by which they 
can exist side by side. 

This is generally the way in which real contradictions are 
reconciled. 

For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as con- 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 69 

stantly falling toward another, and as, at the same time, constantly 
flying away from it. 

The ellipse is a form of motion which, while ? jwing this con- 
tradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it. 

168. What is the exchange process, by which commodities 
are transferable from hands in which they are none-use-values to 
hands in which they become use- values? It is a social circulation of 
matter. 

What happens to a commodity when it finds a resting place 
where it can serve as a use- value? It falls out of the sphere of cir- 
culation into that of consumption. 

But the former sphere alone interests us at present. 

We have, therefore, to consider exchange from a formal point 
of view; to investigate the change of form, or metamorphosis, of 
commodities which effectuate the social circulation of matter. 

169. The comprehension of this form is, as a rule, very im- 
perfect. 

What is the cause of this imperfection? Apart from the dis- 
tinct notion of value itself, every change of form in a commodity re- 
sults from the exchange of two commodities, an ordinary one and 
the money commodity. 

If we keep in view the material fact alone that a commodity 
has been exchanged for gold, what do we overlook? The very thing 
we should observe, namely, what has happened to the form of the 
commodity. 

We overlook the fact that gold, when a mere commodity, is 
not money, and that, when other commodities express their prices 
in gold, this gold is but the money=form of these commodities them- 
selves. 

170. How does commodities first enter the process of ex- 
change? Just as they are, articles of use. 

What differentiates them into commodities and money? The 
process of exchange. 

What does this produce? An external opposition correspond- 
ing to the internal opposition inherent in them, namely, as being at 
once use-values and values. 

How do commodities, as use-values, stand to money? Opposed 
to money as exchange-value. 

On the other hand, how do they stand ? Both opposing sides 
are commodities, unities of use-value and value. 

How does this unity of differences manifest itself? At two 
opposite poles, and at each pole in an opposite way. 

Being poles they are as necessary as they are opposite. 



70 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S '"CAPITAL." 

What have we on one side of the equation? An ordinary com- 
modity, which is, in reality a use-value. 

Its value is expressed only ideally in its price, by which it is 
equated to its opponent, the gold, as the real embodiment of its 
value. 

On the other hand, how does gold, in its metalic reality, rank? 
As the embodiment of value— as value. Gold, as gold, is exchange- 
value itself. 

How is gold as regard to use- value? The use- value of gold 
has only an ideal existance, represented by the series of expressions 
of relative value in which it stands face to face with all other com- 
modities, the sum of whose use makes up the sum of the various uses 
of gold 

What are these antagonistic forms of commodities? They are 
the real forms in which the process of their exchange moves and 
takes place. 

171. Let us now accompany the owner of some commodity- 
say our old friend the weaver— to the scene of action— the market. 

His twenty yards of linen has a definite price £2. He ex- 
changes it for the £2, and then, like a man of the good old stamp 
that he is, he parts with the £2, for a family bible of the same price. 

The linen, which in his eyes is a mere commodity, a depository 
of value, he alienates in exchange for gold, which is the linen's value= 
form, and this form he again parts with for another commodity, the 
bible, which is destined to enter his house as an object of utility, and 
an edification to its inmates. The exchange becomes an accom- 
plished fact by two metamorphoses of opposite yet supplementary 
character— the conversion of the commodity into money, and the 
re-conversion of the money into a commodity. The two phases of 
this metamorphosis are both of them distinct transactions of the 
weaver, selling or the exchange of a commodity for money; buying 
or the exchange of money for a commodity; and, the unity of these 
two acts, selling in order to buy. 

172. What is the result of the whole transaction ? This: as 
regards the weaver, that, instead of being in possession of the linen, 
he now has the bible; instead of his original commodity, he now pos- 
sesses another of the same value, but of different utilities. 

In like manner he procures his other means of subsistence and 
means of production. 

What has the whole process effected from his point of view? 
Nothing more than the exchange of the product of his labor for the 
product of some one's else, nothing more than the exchange of 
products. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 71 

What are the exchange of commodities accompanied by? The 
following change in their form: Commodity— money— commodity. 

What is the result of the process so far as it concerns the ob- 
jects? C— C, the exchange of one commodity for another, the circu- 
lation of materialized social labor, when this result is attained the 
process is at an end. 

C — M. First metamorphosis or sale. 

174. The leap taken by value from the body of the commodity 
into the body of the gold is, as I have elsewhere called it, the mortal 
leap of the commodity. 

If it falls short, then, although the commodity itself is not 
hurt, its owner decidedly is. 

What does the social division of labor cause his labor to be? 
As one sided as his wants are many sided. 

What is the reason that the product of his labor serves him 
solely as exchange- value? For the reason that his labor is one 
sided. 

How can his labor acquire, for him, the property of a socially 
recognized universal equivalent? Only by its being converted into 
money. 

That money, however, is in some one's else pocket. 

What must our friend's commodity be in order to entice the 
money out of that pocket? A use-value for the owner of the money. 

For this it is necessary that the labor spent upon it be of a 
kind that is socially useful— of a kind that constitutes a branch of 
the social division of labor. 

How has this system of production, which must have the 
social division of labor, grown up? Spontaneously, and continues to 
grow behind the backs of the producers. 

The commodity to be exchanged may possibly be the product 
of some new kind of labor that pretends to satisfy some newly 
arisen requirement, or even give rise itself to new requirements. 

A particular operation, though yesterday, perhaps, forming 
one out of the many operations conducted by one producer in creat- 
ing a given commodity, may today separate itself from this connec- 
tion; may establish itself as an independent branch of labor and send 
its incomplete product to market as an independent commodity. 

The circumstances may or may not be ripe for such a separa- 
tion. 

Today the product may satisfy a social want, tomorrow the 
article may, either altogether or partly, be superceded by some other 
more appropriate product. 



72 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S ' 'CAPITAL. 1 



Moreover, although our weaver's labor may be a recognized 
branch of the social division of labor, yet that fact is by no means 
sufficient to guarantee the utility of his 20 yards of linen. 

If the community's want of linen— and such a want has a lim- 
it, like every other want— should already be saturated by the product 
of rival weavers, our friend's product is superfluous, redundant, and consequent- 
ly useless. 

Although people do not look a gift horse in the mouth, our 
friend does not frequent the market for the purpose of making pres- 
ents. 

But, suppose his product turn out a real use- value and thereby 
attract money? 

The question arises, how much will it attract? 

No doubt the answer is anticipated in the price of the article, 
in the exponent of the magnitude of value. 

We leave out of consideration here any accidental miscalcula- 
tion on the value by our friend— a mistake that is soon rectified in 
the market. 

We suppose him to have spent on his product only that amount 
of labor-time that is, on an average, socially necessary. 

The price, then, is merely the money-name of the quantity of 
social labor realized in his commodity. 

But, without leave, and behind the back, of our weaver, the 
old-fashioned mode of weaving undergoes a change. 

The labor-time that yesterday was, without doubt, socially 
necessary to the production of a yard of linen, ceases to be so today 
—a fact which the owner of the money is only too eager to prove 
from the prices quoted by our friend's competitors. 

Unluckily for him weavers are not few and far between. 

Lastly, suppose that every piece of linen in the market con- 
tains no more labor-time than is socially necessary. 

In spite of this, all the pieces, taken as a whole, may have had 
superfluous labor-time spent upon them. 

Note.— If 1,000 yards of linen was sufficient to satisfy the 
want of society, for linen, and one hour was the labor-time socially 
necessary to produce one yard of linen, then 1,000 yards would be 
the necessary amount of linen, and 1,000 hours labor-time the value 
of the linen. 

But, if from insufficient knowledge of the need of society, we 
were to to spend 1,500 hours of social labor-time and produce 1,500 
yards of linen, we would be wasting 500 hours of labor-time— for 
that amount of time would be spent on something useless — and 
would not count as labor, nor would it create any value. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 73 



The labor-time socially necessary to produce the necessary 
quantity being 1,000 hours, the 1,500 yards of linen would contain 
only 1,000 hours labor-time, and one yard would have the value of 
one-fifteen-hundreth part of 1,000 hours labor-time value, or the val- 
ue of 40 minutes necessary labor-time. 

If the market can not stomach the whole quantity at the nor- 
mal price of 2 shillings a yard, this proves that too great a portion 
of the total labor-time of the community had been expended in 
weaving. 

The effect is the same as if each individual weaver had ex- 
pended more labor-time upon his particular product than was socially 
necessary. 

Here we may say, with the German proverb ' 'Caught together, 
hung together. " All the linen in the market counts but as one 
article of commerce, of which each piece is only an aliquot part. 

And, as a matter of fact, the value of each single yard is but 
the materialized form of the same definite and socially fixed quantity 
of homogeneous human labor. 

174. We see, then, commodities are in love with money; but, 
"the course of true love never did run smooth." 

How is the quantitative division of labor brought about? In the 
same spontaneous and accidental manner as its qualitative division. 

What do the owners of commodities find out? That the same 
division of labor that turns them into private producers also frees 
the social process of production and the relation of the individual 
producers to each other within that process from all dependence on 
the will of the producers, and that the seeming mutual independence 
of the individuals is supplemented by a system of mutual depend- 
ence through and by means of the product. 

175. The division of labor converts the product into a com- 
modity, and thereby makes necessary its further conversion into 
money. 

At the same time it makes the accomplishment of this tran- 
substantiation quite accidental. 

Here, however, we are only concerned with the phenomena 
in its integrity, that is, if the commodity be not absolutely unsaleable 
its metamorphosis does take place although the price realized may 
be abnormally above or below its value. 

176. The seller has his commodity replaced by gold, the 
buyer has his gold replaced by a commodity. 

What fact here stares us in the face? That a commodity and 
gold, twenty yards of linen and £2, hi ve changed hands and places; 
in other words, they have been exchanged. 



74 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

For what is the commodity exchanged? For the shape as- 
sumed by its own value; for the universal equivalent. 

And for what is the gold exchanged? For a particular form 
of its own use-value. 

Why does gold take the form of money face to face with the 
linen? Because the linen's price of £2, its denomination in money, 
has already equated the linen to gold in its character of money. 

When does a commodity strip off its original commodity-form? 
On the instant its use-value actually attracts gold, that before ex- 
isted only ideally in its price. 

The realization of a commodity's price, or of its ideal value- 
form, is therefore at the same time the realization of the use-value 
of money; the conversion of a commodity into money is the simulta- 
neous conversion of money into a commodity. 

The apparently single process is in reality a double one. 

From the pole of a commodity owner it is a sale, from the op- 
posite pole of the money owner it is a purchase. 

177. Till now, how have we considered men? Only in one 
economic capacity, that of owners of commodities; a capacity in 
which they appropriate the products of the labor of others by alien- 
ating that of their own. 

What is necessary for one commodity owner to meet with an- 
other that has money? Either that the product of the buyer should 
be money— gold the material of which money consists— or that it 
should already have changed its skin, and have stripped off its origi- 
nal form of a useful object. 

What must gold do in order to play the part of money? Enter 
the market at some point or another. 

Where is this point to be found? At the source of the produc- 
tion of the metal— at the mines. 

What happens to the gold at this point? It is bartered, as the 
immediate product of labor, for some other product of equal value. 

Note.— In the United States, the bullion is exchanged at the 
mint for coined money, except from small miners. This is what is 
termed free coinage. The mint assays the bullion and give in return 
as much coin as the bullion equals in fineness and weight. 

And what does it represent? From that moment it always 
represents the realized price of some commodity. 

Apart from its exchange for other commodities at the source 
of its production, gold, in whosesoever hands, is the transformed 
shape of some commodity alienated by its owner; it is the product 
of a sale or the first metamorphosis, C— M. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 75 

How did gold become the ideal money, or a measure of value? 
It became so in consequence of all commodities measuring their 
values by it, and thus contrasting it ideally with their natural shapes 
as useful objects, and making it the shape of their value. 

How did gold become the real money? By the general alien- 
ation of commodities, by actually changing places with their natural 
forms as useful objects, and thus becoming in reality the embodi- 
ment of their values. 

What do commodities assume, when they strip off every trace 
of their natural use-values? They assume the money-shape, when 
they strip off their natural use-value, and of the particular kind of 
labor to which they owe their existence, in order to transform them- 
selves into the uniform socially recognized incarnation of homogene- 
ous human labor. 

Under the money-form all commodities look alike. Hence 
money may be dirt, although dirt is not money. 

We will assume that the two pieces in consideration of which 
our weaver has parted with his linen are the metamorphosed shape 
of a quarter of wheat. 

The sale of the linen C— M, is at the same time its purchase, 
M-C. 

But, the sale is the first act of a process that ends with a 
transaction of an opposite nature— namely, the purchase of a bible; 
the purchase of the linen, on the other hand, ends a movement that 
began with a transaction of an opposite nature, namely, with the 
sale of the wheat. C— M. (linen and money) which is the first 
phase of C— M— C (linen— money— bible) is also M— C (money — 
linen) the last phase of another movement, C — M— C (wheat— money 
— linen). 

The first metamorphosis of one commodity, its transformation 
from a commodity into money, is therefore also invariably the second 
metamorphosis of some other commodity, the transformation of the 
latter from money into a commodity. 

M.— C„ or purchase the second and concluding metamorphosis of a commodity. 

178. For what reason is money alienable without restriction 
or condition? Because it is the metamorphosed shape of all other 
commodities, the result of their general alienation. 

How does money read prices? Backwards, and thus depicts 
itself in the bodies of all commodities that offer to it the material for 
the realization of its own use-value. 

How does price define the limit of the convertibility of money? 
By pointing to its quantity. 

Since every commodity, on becoming money, disappears as a 



76 CATECHISM OF KARL MAUX'S "CAPITAL." 

commodity, it is impossible to tell from the money itself, how it got 
into the hands of its possessor, or what article has been exchanged 

for it. 

No matter from whatever source it may come. 

Representihg, on the one hand, a sold commodity, it repre- 
sents on the other a commodity to be bought. 

179. M.— C. a purchase is at the same time C.—M. a sale; 
the concluding metamorphosis of one commodity is the first meta- 
morphosis of another. 

With regard to our weaver, the life of his commodity ends 
with the bible, into which he has converted his £2. 

But suppose the seller of the bible turns the £2 set free by 
the weaver into brandy, M.— C, the concluding phase of C. — M. — C. 
(linen, money, bible), is also C.—M., the first phase of C— M.— C. 

(bible, money, brandy). 

The producer of a particular commodity has that one article 
alone to offer; this he sells, very often, in large quantities, but his 
many and various wants compel him to split up the price realized, 
the sum of money set free, into numerous purchases. 

Hence a sale leads to many purchases of various articles. 

The concluding metamorphosis of a commodity thus consti- 
tutes an aggregation of first metamorphosis of various other com- 
modities. 

180. If we consider the complete metamorphosis of a com- 
modity, as a whole, how does it appear? In the first place, it 
appears that it is made up of two opposite and complementary move- 
ments C.-M. and M.-C. 

How are these two antithetical transmutations brought about? 
by two antithetical social acts on the part of the owner. 

And these acts in their turn stamp the character of the eco- 
nomical parts played by him. 

As a person who makes a sale he is a seller; as a person who 
makes a purchase he is a buyer. 

But, just as upon every transmutation of a commodity its two 
forms, commodity-form, and money-form, exist simultaneously, but 
at two different poles, so every seller has a buyer opposed to him and 
every buyer a seller. 

While one commodity is going through its two transmutations 
in succession, from commodity into money and from money into an- 
other commodity, the owner changes in succession his part from that 
of seller to that of buyer. 

These characters of seller and buyer are, therefore, not perma- 
nent, but attacli themselves in turn to the various persons engaged 
in the circulation of commodities. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 77 

181. What does the complete metamorphosis of a commodity, 
in its simplest form, imply? Four extremes and three dramatis per= 
sona (dramatical characters). 

First a commodity comes face to face with money; money is 
the form taken by the commodity, and exists in all its hard reality in 
the pocket of the buyer. 

A commodity owner is thus brought into contact with the pos- 
sessor of money. 

So soon now as the commodity has been changed into money, 
the money becomes its transient equivalent form, the use-value of 
which equivalent is to be found in the bodies of other commodities. 

Money, the final term of the first transmutation, is at the 
same time the starting point for the second. 

The person who is seller in the first transaction, becomes a 
buyer in the second, in which a third commodity owner appears on 
the scene as a seller. 

182. What do the two phases, each inverse to the other, that 
make up the metamorphoses of a commodity constitute? A circular 
movement, a circuit; commodity form, stripping off of this form, 
and returning to the commodity-form. 

How does the commodity here appear? Under two different 
aspects, at the starting point it is not a use-value to its owner, at 
the finishing point it is. 

How does money appear in the first phase? As a solid crystal 
of value, a crystal into which the commodity eagerly solidifies. 

How does it appear in the second phase? To dissolve into the 
mere transient equivalent form destined to be replace by a use- 
value. 

183. The two metamorphoses constituting the circuit are at 
the same time two inverse partial metamorphoses of two other com- 
modities. 

One and the same commodity, the linen, opens the series of 
its own metamorphoses, and completes the metamorphosis of another, 
the wheat. 

In the first phase or sale the linen plays these two parts in its 
own person. 

But, then, changed into gold, it completes its own second and 
final metamorphosis, and helps at the same time to accomplish the 
first metamorphosis of a third commodity. 

Hence the circuit made by one commodity in the course of its 
metamorphoses is inextricably mixed up with the circuits of other 
commodities. 



78 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



What does the total of all the different circuits constitute? 
The circulation of commodities. 

184. Does the circulation of commodities differ from the di- 
rect exchange of products, that is, barter? Not only in form but also 
in substance. Only consider the course of events. 

The weaver has, as a matter of fact, exchanged his linen for 
a bible, his commodity for some one's else. 

But this is true only so far as he himself is concerned. 

The seller of the bible, who prefers something to warm his in- 
sides, no more thought of exchanging his bible for linen than our 
weaver knew that wheat had been exchanged for his linen. 

B's commodity replaces that of A, but A and B do not mutual- 
ly exchange those commodities. 

It may, of course, happen, that A and B make simultaneous 
purchases; the one from the other, but such exceptional transactions 
are by no means the necessary result of the general condition of the 
circulation of commodities. 

We see here, on the one hand, how the exchange of commodi- 
ties break through all local and personal bonds inseparable from 
direct barter, and develops the circulation of the products of social 
labor; on the other hand, how it develops a whole net work of social 
relations spontaneous in their growth and entirely beyond the con- 
trol of the actors. 

It is only because the farmer has sold his wheat, that the 
weaver is enabled to sell his linen; only because our weaver has sold 
his linen our "Hotspur" is enabled to sell his bible; and only because 
the latter has sold the water of everlasting life that the distiller is 
enabled to sell his eau=de=vie (brandy), and so on. 

185. The process of circulation, therefore, does not, like di- 
rect barter of products, become extinguished upon the use-value 
exchanging place and hands. 

The money does not vanish on dropping out of the circuit of 
the metamorphosis of a given commodity. 

It is constantly being precipitated into new places in the arena 
of circulation vacated by other commodities. 

In the complete metamorphosis of the linen, for example, 
linen— money— bible, the linen first falls out of circulation, and money 
steps into its place. 

When one commodity replaces another, the money always 
sticks to the hand of some third person. 

Circulation sweats money from every pore. 

Bear this well in mind, as it covers that oft mistaken notion, 
that commodities are sold readily, when money is plenty, whereas 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 79 

money has a rapid currency when commodities has a rapid circu- 
lation. 

186. Nothing can be more childish than the dogma that, be- 
cause every sale is a purchase, and every purchase a sale, therefore 
the circulation of commodities necessarily implies an equilibrium of 
sales and purchases. 

If this means that the actual sales is equal to the number of 
purchases, it is merely tautology. 

But its real purpose is to prove that every seller brings his 
buyer to market with him, nothing of the kind. 

The sale and the purchase constitute one identical act— an ex- 
change between a commodity owner and an owner of money, be-r 
tween two persons as opposite to each other, as the two poles of a 
magnet. They form two distinct acts, of polar and opposite charac- 
ter; when performed by one single person. 

What does the identity of sale and purchase imply? That the 
commodity is useless, if on being thrown into the alchemistical retort 
of- circulation it does not come out again in the shape of money; in 
other words, if it can not be sold by its owner, and therefore be 
bought by the owner of the money. 

What does this identity further imply? That exchange, if it 
does take place, constitutes a period of rest— an interval long or short 
in the life of the commodity. Since the first metamorphosis of a 
commodity is at once a sale and a purchase, it is also an independent 
process in itself. 

The purchaser has a commodity, the seller has the money; 
that is, a commodity ready to go into circulation at any time. No 
one can sell unless some one else purchases. But no one is forth- 
with bound to purchase because he has just sold. 

What does this show us? That circulation bursts through all 
restrictions as to time, place, and individuals imposed by direct 
barter. 

How is this effected? By splitting up, into the antithesis of a 
sale and a purchase, the direct identity that does exist between the 
alienation of one's own and the acquisition of some other man's 
product. 

To say that these two independent and antithetical acts have 
an intrinsic unity— are essentially one— is the same as to say that 
this intrinsic oneness expresses itself in an external antithesis. 

If the interval of time between the two complementary phases 
of the complete metamorphoses of a commodity become too great— 
if the split between sale and purchase become too pronounced— the 
intimate connection between them, their oneness, asserts itself, 



80 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



what is produced? A crisis- -that is, if more goods are produced 
than both the home and foreign markets can purchase, production 
must cease, and this results in throwing large numbers out of em- 
ployment which destroys the purchasing power of the home market, 
both home and foreign market being unable to purchase, a crisis is 
the result. 

The antithesis, use-value and value, the contradiction that 
private labor is bound to manifest itself as direct social labor; the 
contradiction between the personification of objects and representa- 
tion of persons by things— all these antithesis and contradictions, 
which are imminent in commodities assert themselves and develop 
their mode of motion in the antithetical phases of the metamorpho- 
ses of a commodity. 

These modes, therefore, imply the possibility, and no more 
than the possibility of crises. The conversion of this possibility into 
a reality is the result of a long series of relations that, from our 
standpoint of the simple circulation of commodities, have as yet no 
existence. 

b. The currency of money. 

187. What is required for the change of form C— M— C by 
which the circulation of the material products of labor is brought 
about? That a given value in the shape of a commodity shall begin 
the process, and shall also, in the shape of a commodity end it. 

What is this movement of a commodity? A circuit. 

On the other hand, how does this circuit affect the money? It 
precludes the money from making a circuit. 

What is the result? Not the return of the money, but its con- 
tinual removal further and further away from the starting point. 

So long as the seller sticks fast to his money, which is the 
transformed shape of his commodity, that commodity is still in the 
first phase of its metamorphosis, and has completed only half its 
course. 

But, so soon as he completes the process, so soon as he supple- 
ments his sale by a purchase, the money again leaves the hands of 
its possessor. 

It is true, if the weaver, after buying the bible, sells more, 
money comes back into his hands. 

But this return is not owing to the circulation of the first 
twenty yards of linen; that circulation resulted in the money getting 
into the hands of the seller of the bible. 

The return of the money into the hands of the weaver is 
brought about only by the renewal or repetition of the process of 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 81 

circulation with a fresh commodity, which renewed process ends 
with the same result as its predecessor did. 

Hence the movement directly imparted to the money by the 
circulation of commodities, takes the form of a constant motion 
away from its starting point— of a course from the hands of one 
commodity owner to those of another. 

This course constitutes its currency. 

188. The currency of money is the constant and monotonous 
repetition of the same process. The commodity is always in the 
hands of the seller, the money, as a means of purchase, always in 
the hands of the buyer. 

And money serves as a means of purchase by realizing the 
price of the commodity. 

This realization transfers the commodity from the seller to the 
buyer, and removes the money from the hands of the buyer into 
those of the seller, where it again goes through the same process 
with another commodity. That this one-sided character of the 
money's motion arises out of the two-sided character of the com- 
modity's motion is a circumstance that is veiled over. 

The very nature of the circulation of commodities begets the 
opposite appearance. In the first metamorphos of a commody is vis- 
ably not only the money's movement, but also that of the commodity 
itself; in the second metamorphosis, on the contrary, the movement 
appears to us as the movement of the money alone. 

In the first phase of its circulation the commodity changes 
place with the money. Thereupon the commodity, under its aspect 
as a useful object, falls out of circulation into that of consumption, 
in its stead we have its value-shape — money. 

It then goes through its second phase of circulation, but under 
the shape of money. 

The continuety of this movement is, therefore, kept up by the 
money alone; and the same movement as regards the commodity 
consists of two processes of an antithetical character, is when con- 
sidered as the movement of the money, always one and the same 
process — a continual change of places with ever fresh commodities. 

Hence the result brought about by the circulation of commodi- 
ties, namely, the replacing of one commodity by another, takes the 
appearance of having been effected, not by means of the change 
of form of the commodities, but rather as the money acting as a 
medium of circulation, by an action that circulates commodities, to 
all appearances motionless in themselves, and transfers them from 
hands in which they are non-use-values to hands in which they are 
use-values; and that in a direction continually drawing commodities 



82 CATECHISM OF CARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

from circulation and stepping into their place, and in this way con- 
tinually moving further and further from its starting point. 

What appearance has the movement of the money? Al- 
though its movement is merely the expression of the circu- 
lation of commodities, yet the contrary appears to be the actual fact, 
and the circulation of commodities seems to be the result of the 
movement of the money. 

189. Why does money function as the means of circulation? 
Only because in it the value of commodities have independent 
reality. 

What is its movement, as the means of circulation? Merely 
the movement of -commodities while changing their form. 

How does this fact make itself visible? In the currency of 
money. 

How is the two-fold change in the form of a commodity re- 
flected? In the twice repeated change of place of the same piece of 
money during the complete metamorphosis of a commodity and in its 
constantly repeated change of place, as metamorphosis follow meta- 
morphosis and each becomes interlaced with the other. 

190. The linen, for instance, first of all changes its commodi- 
ty-form for its money-form. 

The last term of its first metamorphosis (C— M), or the money- 
form, is the first term of its final metamorphosis (M— C), or its re- 
conversion into a useful commodity— the bible. 

But each of these changes of form is accomplished by an 
exchange between commodity and money, by their reciprocal dis- 
placement. 

The same piece of coin in the first act changed places with the 
linen; in the second with the bible. 

They are displaced twice. 

The first metamorphosis puts them in the weaver's pocket, 
the second draws them out of it. 

The two inverse changes undergone by the same commodity 
are reflected in the displacement, twice repeated, but in opposite 
directions, of the same piece of coin. 

191. If, on the contrary, only one phase of the metamorpho- 
sis is gone through, if there are only sales, or only purchases, then 
a given piece of money changes its place only once. 

What does this second change correspond to and express? 
The second metamorphosis of a commodity — its re-conversion from 
money into another commodity intended for use. 

It is a matter of course that all this is applicable to the simple 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 83 

circulation of commodities alone, the only form we are now con- 
sidering. 

192. What happens to a commodity when its first steps into 
circulation and undergoes its first change of form? It falls out of 
circulation and is replaced by another commodity. 

What happens to money, as a medium of circulation? It keeps 
continually within the sphere of circulation and moves about in it. 

The question, therefore, arises, how much money this sphere 
constantly absorbs. 

193. In a given country there takes place every day, at the 
same time, but in different localities, numerous one sided metamor- 
phosis of commodities, or in other words, numerous sales and numer- 
ous purchases. 

The commodities are equated beforehand in imagination by 
their prices, to definite quantities of money. 

And since, in the form of circulation now under consideration, 
money and commodities come bodily face to face, one at the positive 
pole of purchase, the other at the negative pole of sale; it is clear 
that the amount of the means of circulation required is determined 
beforehand by the sum of the prices of all these commodities. 

As a matter of fact, the money in reality represents the quan- 
tity or sum of gold ideally expressed by the sum of the prices of the 
commodities. 

The quantity of these two sums is, therefore, self-evident. 

We know, however, that the value of commodities remaining 
constant, their prices vary with the value of gold (the material of 
money) rising in proportion as it falls, and falling in proportion as it 
rises. 

Now if, in consequence of such a rise or fall in the value of 
gold, the sum of the prices fall or rise, the sum of money in currency 
must fall or rise to the same extent. 

What is this change of quantity of the circulating medium 
caused by? In this case, by money the itself, by virtue of, yet not in 
virtue of its function as a circulating medium, but of its function as 
a measure of value. 

What would the result be, if we were to change the material 
of the circulating medium from gold to silver, or vise versa? First, 
the price of the commodities vary inversely as the value of the 
money, then the quantity of the circulating medium varies directly 
as the price of the commodities. 

Exactly the same thing would happen if, for instance, instead 
of the value of gold falling, gold were replaced by silver as a measure 



84 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 1 



of value, or if, instead of the value of silver rising, gold were to 
thrust silver out from being the measure of value. 

In the one case more silver would be current than gold was 
before; in the other case, less gold would be current than silver was 
before. 

In each case the value of the material of money, that is the 
value of the commodity that serves as the measure of value, would 
have undergone a change, and therefore, so, too, would the prices of 
commodities which express their value in money, and so, too, would 
the quantity of money current whose function it is to realize those 
prices. 

We have already seen that the sphere of circulation has an 
opening through which gold (or the material of money generally) 
enters into it as a commodity with a given value. 

Hence, when money enters on its function as a measure of 
value, when it expresses prices, its value is already determined. 

If now the value of money falls, how is the fact first made 
evident? By a change in the price of those commodities that are di- 
rectly bartered for the precious metals at the source of their pro- 
duction. 

In the imperfectly developed stage of civil society, the greater 
part of all other commodities will continue for a long time to be esti- 
mated by the antiquated illusory value of the measure of value. 

Nevertheless one commodity infects another through their 
common value relation, so that their prices, in gold or in silver, grad- 
ually settle down into the proportion determined by their compara- 
tive values until finally the value of all commodities are estimated in 
the new value of the metal that constitutes money. 

What causes increased quantities of the precious metals to en- 
ter this process? Their streaming in to replace the articles bartered 
for them at the place of their production. 

In proportion, therefore, as commodities acquire their true 
prices, in proportion as their values become estimated according to 
the fallen value of the precious metals, in the same proportion the 
quantity of that metal necessary for realizing those new prices, is 
provided beforehand. 

A one sided observation of the results that followed upon the 
discovery of fresh supplies of gold and silver led some economists in 
the seventeenth century, and particularly in the eighteenth century, to 
the false conclusion that the prices of commodities had gone up in 
consequence of the increased quantity of gold and silver serving as 
means of circulation. 

Henceforth, we shall consider the value of gold to be given, 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 85 

as, in fact, it is momentarily whenever we estimate the price of a 
commodity. 

194. On this supposition, then, how is the quantity of the 
medium of circulation determined? By the sum of the prices to be 
realized. 

If, now, we further suppose the price of each commodity to be 
given, upon what does the sum of the prices depend? Clearly! upon 
the mass of commodities in circulation. 

It requires little racking of brains to comprehend that if one 
quarter of wheat cost $10, 100 quarters of wheat will cost $1,000, 200 
quarters $2,000, and so on; that, consequently, the quantity of money 
that changes places with ttie wheat, when sold, must increase with 
the quantity of the wheat. 

195. If the mass of commodities remain constant, how does 
the quantity of circulating money vary? With the fluctuations in 
the prices of those commodities. 

Why? Because the sum of the prices increases or diminishes 
in consequence of the change in price. 

To produce this effect must the price of all commodities rise 
or fall simultaneously? By no means. A rise or fall in the price of 
a number of leading articles is sufficient to increase or diminish the 
sum of the prices of all commodities, and, therefore, to put more or 
less money in circulation. 

Whether the change in the prices corresponds to an actual 
change of value in the commodities, or whether it be the result of a 
mere fluctuation in the market prices, the effect on the quantity of 
the medium of circulation remains the same. 

196. Suppose the following articles to be sold or partially 
metamorphosed simultaneously in different localities; say one quarter 
of wheat, 20 yards of linen, one bible, and four gallons of brandy. 

If the price of each article be $2, and the sum of the prices to 
be realized be consequently $8, it follows that $8 in money must go 
into circulation. 

If on the other hand, these same articles are links in the chain 
of metamorphoses, one quarter of wheat $2—20 yards of linen $2— 
one bible $2— four gallons of brandy $2, a chain that is already well 
known to us, in that case the $2 causes the different commodities to 
circulate one after the other, and after realizing their prices succes- 
sively, and, therefore, the sum of those prices $8, they come to rest 
at last in the pocket of the distiller. 

The $2 thus makes four moves. 

To what does this repeated change of place of the same pieces 
of money correspond? To the double change in the form of the com- 



86 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



modities, to their motion in opposite directions through two stages of 
circulation, and to the interlacing of the metamorphoses of different 
commodities. 

These antithetical and complementary phases, of which the 
process of metamorphoses consists, are gone through, not simultane- 
ously but successively. 

Time is therefore required for the completion of the series. 

How do we measure the velocity of the currency of money? 
By the number of moves made by a given piece of money in a given 
time. 

Suppose the circulation of the fojir articles takes a day. 

The sum Of the prices to be realized in the day is $8, the num- 
ber of moves of the two pieces of money is four, and the quantity of 
money circulating is $2. 

Hence for a given interval of time during the process of circu- 
lation, what is the quantity of money functioning as the circulating 
medium? The quantity of circulating medium is equal to the sum of 
the prices of the commodities divided by the number of moves made 
by coins of the same denomination. 

This law holds good generally. 

197. The total circulation of commodities in a given country 
during a given period is made up, on the one hand, of numerous iso- 
lated and simultaneously partial metamorphoses— sales which are at 
the same time purchases, in which each coin changes its place only 
once, or makes only one move; on the other hand, of numerous dis- 
tinct series of metatamorphoses running side by side, and partly 
coalesing with each other, in each of which series each coin makes a 
number of moves, the number being greater er less according to cir- 
cumstances. 

How do we determine the average velocity of the currency of 
money? The total number of moves made by all the circulating 
coins of one denomination being given, we can arrive at the average 
number of moves made by a single coin of that denomination, or at 
the average velocity of the currency of money. 

Since the quantity of money capable of being absorbed by the 
circulation is given for a given mean velocity of currency, all that is 
necessary in order to abstract a given number of dollars from the 
circulation is to throw the same number of one dollar notes into it— 
a trick well-known to all bankers. 

198. Just as the currency of money, generally considered, is 
but a reflex of the circulation of commodities, or of the antithetical 
metamorphoses they undergo, so too, the velocity of the currency re- 
flects the rapidity with which commodities change their forms, the 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 87 

continual interlacing of one series of metamorphoses with another, 
the hurried social interchange of matter, the rapid disappearance, of 
commodities from the sphere of circulation, and the equally rapid 
substitution of fresh ones in their place. 

Note.— The oft mistaken notion that money is plentiful or 
scarce according as the circulation of commodities are rapid or slug- 
gish is here shown to be the reverse, that when the circulation of 
commodities are brisk, money seems to be plenty, because a larger 
quantity is in currency, 

When the circulation of commodities are sluggish, money seems 
to be scarce because it is in hoarding. 

Does the money vanish during a crisis? Certainly not. 

It becomes hoarded in the banks. 

When "prosperity" booms, does the money materialize again? 
Certainly not. 

It flows out of hoarding to be used in the circulation of com- 
modities. 

Money increases when more gold is mined and sent to the 
mint and coined. 

It dimishes when foreign trade is brisk and we have to pay a 
large balance. 

Or when foreign capital, invested in this country, draws its 
dividends. 

Hence, in the velocity of currency, the fluent unity of the 
antithetical and complementary phases, the unity, of the conversion 
of the useful aspect of commodities into their value aspect, and their 
re-conversion from the latter aspect to the former, or the unity of 
the two phases, sale and purchase. 

On the other hand, the retardation of the currency reflects the 
separation of these two processes into isolated antithetical phases, 
reflects the stagnation in the change in form, and, therefore, in the 
social interchange of matter. 

The circulation itself, of course, gives no clue to the origin of 
this stagnation; it merely puts in evidence the phenomenon itself. 

The general public, who, simultaneously with the retardation 
of the circulation, see money appear and disappear at the periphery 
of circulation, naturally attribute this retardation to the deficiency 
in the circulating medium. 

199. How is the total quantity of money functioning, during 
a given period, as the circulating medium determined? On the one 
hand, by the prices of the circulating commodities; on the other 



88 CATECHISM OP KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

hand, by the rapidity with which the antithetical phases of the 
metamorphosis follow one another. 

What depends upon this rapidity? What proportion of the 
sum of the prices can, on an average, be realized by each single 
coin. 

What does the sum of the prices of the circulating commodi- 
ties depend? The quantity as well as the prices of the commodities. 

These three factors, however, —state of prices, quantity of 
circulating commodities, velocity of currency, are all variable. 

Hence, the sum of the prices to be realized, and consequently 
the quantity of the circulating medium depending on that sum, will 
vary with the numerous varations of these three factors in combina- 
tion. 

Of these variations we shall consider those alone that have 
been the most important in the history of prices. 

200. Prices remaining constant, how may the quantity of 
circulating medium increase? Owing to the number of circulating 
commodities increasing, or to the velocity of currency decreasing, or 
to a combination of the two. 

How may it decrease, prices remaining the same? Owing to 
a decrease of the number of circulating commodities, or with an in- 
creasing rapidity of their circulation. 

201. How may the quantity of circulating medium remain 
constant, with a general rise in the prices of commodities? Provided 
that the number of commodities in circulation decrease proportion- 
ately to the increase in the price, or provided that the velocity of 
the currency increases at the same rate as the prices rise, the num- 
ber of commodities remaining the same. 

How may the quantity of circulating medium decrease, prices 
remaing the same? Owing to the number of commodities decreas- 
ing more rapidly; or to the currency increasing more rapidly than 
prices rise. 

202. How may the quantity of the circulating medium remain 
constant, with a general fall in the prices of commodities? Provided 
the number of commodities increase proportionately to their fall in 
prices, or provided the velocity of currency decrease in the same 
proportion. 

How may the quantity of circulating medium increase, with a 
general fall in prices? Provided the number of commodities increase 
faster; or the rapidity of circulation decrease faster than the prices 
fall. 

203. The variation of the different factors may compensate 
each other, so that, notwithstanding their instability, the sum of the 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 89 

prices to be realized and the quantity of money in circulation re- 
mains constant; consequently, we find, especially if we take long 
periods into consideration, that the deviation from the average level, 
of the quantity of money current in any country, are much smaller 
than we should at first sight expect, apart, of course, from excessive 
perturbations periodically arising from industrial crises, less fre- 
quently from the fluctuation in the value of money. 

204. The law that the quantity of circulating medium is de- 
termined by the sum of the prices of the commodities circulating, 
and the average velocity of currency, may also be stated as follows: 
Given the sum of the values of commodities, and the average rapid- 
ity of their metamorphoses, the quantity of precious metal current 
as money depends on the value of the precious metal. 

The erroneous opinion that it is, on the contrary, prices that 
are determined by the quantity of. circulating medium, and that the 
latter depends on the quantity of precious metal in a country; this 
opinion was based by those who first held it upon the absurd hypo- 
thesis that commodities are without a price, and money without a 
value, when they first enter into circulation, and, that once in the 
circulation, an aliquot part of the medley of commodities is ex- 
changed for an aliquot part of the heap of precious metals. 

c. Coin and symbols of value. 

What does coin, the shape that money takes, spring from? 
From its function as the circulating medium. 

The weight of gold represented in imagination by the prices, 
or money names, of commodities, must confront these commodities, 
in the shape of coin, or pieces of gold, of a given denomination. 

Coining, like the establishment of the standard of prices, is the 
business of the State. 

The different national uniforms worn at home by gold and 
silver coin, and doffed again in the markets of the world, indicate 
the separation between the internal or national spheres of the circu- 
lation of commodities and their universal spheres. 

205. What is the difference between coin and bullion? Only 
the shape, and gold can, at any time, pass from one to the other. 

For, no sooner does gold leave the mint than it finds itself on 
the high road to the melting pot. 

During their currency, coins wear away, some more others less. 

Name and substance, normal weight and real weight, begin 
their separation, coins of the same denomination become different in 
value because they are different in weight. 

The weight of gold fixed upon as the standard of prices devi- 
ates from the weight that serves as the circulating medium, and the 



IK) CATECHISM OF KARL MAKX's "CAPITAL.' 



latter thereby ceases t<> be a real equivalent for the commodity 
whose price it realizes. 

The history of coinage during the middle ages and down into 
the eighteenth century records the ever renewed confusion arising 
from this cause. 

A natural tendency to convert coins into a mere semblance of 
what they profess to be, into the symbol oi' the weight of metal they 
are officially supposed to contain, is recognized by modern legisla- 
tion, which fixes the loss of weight sufficient to demonetize a gold 
coin, or to make it no longer legal tender. 

206. The fact that the currency of coin itself effects a sepa- 
ration between them as mere pieces of metal on the one hand, and 
as coins with a definite function on the other, imply what? The 
latent possibility of replacing metallic coins by tokens of some 
other material, by symbols serving the same purpose as coins. 

The practical difficulty in the way of coining extremely minute 
quantities of gold and silver, and circumstances that at first the less 
precious metal is used as a measure of value instead of the more 
precious, copper instead of silver, silver instead oi' gold, and that the 
less precious circulates as money until dethroned by the more pre- 
cious all these facts explain the parts historically played by silver 
and copper tokens as substitutes for gold coins. 

Where do silver and copper tokens take the place of gold? In 
those regions oi* circulation where coins pass from hand to hand most 
rapidly, and are subject to the maximum amount of wear and tear. 

This occurs where sales and purchases on a very small scale 
are continually happening. 

In order to prevent the satellites from establishing themselves 
permanently in the place of gold, positive enactments determine the 
extent to which they must be compulsory received as payments in- 
stead of gold. 

The particular tracks pursued by the different species of coin 
in currency run mutually into each other. 

The tokens keep company with gold, to pay fractional parts of 
the smallest gold coins; gold is. on the one hand, constantly pouring 
into retail circulation, ami, on the other hand, is constantly being 
thrown out again by being changed into tokens. 

207. The weight of metal in silver and copper tokens is arbi- 
trarily fixed by law. 

When in currency, they wear away even more rapidly than 
gold coins. 

Hence, their functions are totally independent oi' their weight, 
ami consequently oi' all value. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 91 



The function of gold as coin becomes completely independent 

of the metallic value of the gold. 

Therefore things that are relatively without value, sue)] a 
paper notes, can serve as coins in its place. 

This purely symbolical character is, to a certain extent, mask- 
ed in metal tokens, in paper money it stands out plainly. 

In fact, it is only the first step that is difficult. 

208. We refer here only to inconvertible paper money issued 
by the state, and having compulsory circulation. 

Money based upon credit implies, on the other hand, contra- 
dictions, which, from our standpoint of simple circulation of com- 
modities, are as yet totally unknown to us. 

But, we may affirm this much, that just as true paper money 
takes its rise in the function of money as the circulating medium, so 
money based upon credit takes root spontaneously in the function of 
money as means of payment. 

209. The state puts into circulation bits of paper on which 
the various denominations,— say $1.00, $5.00,— are printed. 

In so far as they actually take the place of gold, to the same 
amount, their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the cur- 
rency of money itself. 

A law peculiar to the circulation of paper money can spring 
up only from the proportion in which paper money represents gold. 
Such a law exists; stated simply, it is as follows: The issue of paper 
money must not exceed the amount of gold, or silver as the case 
may be, which would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols. 

Now the quantity of circulating medium in a given country 
never sinks below a certain minimum easily ascertained by actual 
experience. 

The fact that this minimum mass continually undergoes 
changes in its constituent parts, or that the pieces of gold of which 
it consists are being constantly replaced by fresh ones, causes, of 
course, no change either in its amount or in the continuity of its cir- 
culation. 

It can, therefore, be replaced by paper symbols. 

If, on the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to- 
day filled with paper money, to the full extent of their capacity for 
absorbing money, they might tomorrow be overflowing in conse- 
quence of the fluctuation in the circulation of commodities. 

There would no longer be any standard. 

If the paper money exceeds its proper limit, which is the 
amount in gold coin of the like denomination that can actually be 
current, it would, apart from the danger of falling into general dis- 



92 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



repute, represent only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance 
with the laws of the circulation of commodities, it required, and is 
alone capable of being represented by paper. 

If the quantity of paper money issued be double the quantity 
which it ought to be, then, as a matter of fact, $20 would be the 
money name, not of one ounce but of one-half ounce of gold. 

The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken 
place in the function of gold as a standard of price. 

Those values that were previously expressed by the $20 would 
now be expressed by the price of $40. 

210. Paper money is a token representing gold, or money. 
The relation between it and the values of commodities is this, 

that the latter are ideally expressed in the same quantities of gold 
that are symbolically represented by the paper. 

Only in so far as paper money represents gold, which like all 
other commodities, has value in it, is it a symbol of value. 

211. Finally, some one may ask why gold is capable of being 
replaced by tokens that have no value? 

But, as we have already seen, it is capable of being replaced 
only in so far as it functions exclusively as coin, or as the circulating 
medium, and as nothing else. 

Now, money has other functions besides this one, the circulat- 
ing medium is not necessarily the only one attached to gold coin, 
although this is the case with those abraided coins that continue to 
circulate. 

Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, 
only so long as it actually circulates. 

But, this is just the case with the minimum mass of gold 
which is capable of being replaced by paper money. 

That mass remains constantly within the sphere of circulation, 
continually functions as a circulating medium, and exists exclusively 
for that purpose. 

Its movement, therefore, represents nothing but the continued 
alteration of the inverse phases of the metamorphoses C— M— C, 
phases in which commodities confront their value-forms, only to dis- 
appear again immediately. 

The independent existence of the exchange-value of a com- 
modity is here a transient apparition, by means of which the com- 
modity is immediately replaced by another commodity. 

Hence, in this process, which continually makes money pass 
from hand to hand, the mere symbolical existence of money suffices. 

Its functional existence absorbs, so to say, its material exist- 
ence. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 93 

Being a transient and objective reflex of the price of commodi- 
ties, it serves only as a symbol of itself, and is, therefore, capable of 
being replaced by a token. 

One thing, however, is requisite: this token must have an ob- 
jective social validity of its own, and this the paper symbol acquires 
by its forced currency. 

This compulsory action of the state can take effect only within 
the inner sphere of circulation which is co-terminous with the terri- 
tory of the community; but it is also only within that sphere that 
money completely responds to its function of being the circulating 
medium, or becomes coin. 

Section 3. Money. 

212. The commodity that functions as a measure of value, 
and, either in its own person or by a representative, as the medium 
of circulation, is money, gold and silver is therefore money. 

It functions as money, on the one hand, when it has to be 
present in its golden person. It is then the money commodity— 
neither merely ideal, as in its function as a measure of value, nor 
capable of being represented, as in its function as a circulating 
medium. 

On the other hand, it also functions as money when, by virtue 
of its function, whether that function be performed in person or by 
representative, it congeals into the sole form of value, the only ade- 
quate form of existence of exchange- value, in opposition to use- val- 
ue, represented by all other commodities. 

a. Hoarding. 

213. The continual movement in circuits of the two antitheti- 
cal metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alteration of 
sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of money or 
in the function that money performs of a perpetual motion of circu- 
lation. 

But so soon as the metamorphosis is interrupted, so soon as 
sales are not supplemented by subsequent purchases, money ceases 
to be mobilized, it is transformed, as Boisgillebert says, "from mov- 
able into immovable," from coin into money. 

214. From the very earliest development of the circulation of 
commodities, there is also developed the necessity and the passionate 
desire to hold fast the product of the first metamorphosis. 

This product is the transformed shape of the commodity, or 
its gold-chrysalis. 



94 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S ''CAPITAL." 

( lommodities are thus sold, not for the purpose of buying oth- 
ers, but in order to replace their commodity-form by their money- 
form. 

From being the mere means of affecting the circulation of 
commodities, the change of form becomes the end and aim. 

The changed form of the commodity is thus prevented from 
functioning as its unconditionally alienable form, or as its merely 
transient money-form. 

The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller be- 
comes a hoarder of money. 

215. In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it 
is the surplus use-values alone that are converted into money. 

Gold and silver thus become of themselves social expressions 
of a superfluity of wealth. 

This naive form of hoarding becomes perpetuated in those 
communities in which the traditional mode of production is carried 
on for the supply of a fixed and limited circle of home wants. 

It is thus with the people of Asia, and particularly of the East 
Indies. 

Vanderlint, who fancied that the prices in a country are de- 
termined by the amount of gold and silver found in it, asks himself 
why Indian commodities are so cheap? 

From 1602 to 1734, he remarks, they buried 150 million pounds 
sterling of silver, which originally came from America to Europe. 
In ten years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India and China 
£120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in exchange for 
Australian gold. 

Most of the silver exported to China makes its way to India. 

216. As the production of commodities further develops, ev- 
ery producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the nexus 
reram, or the social pledge. 

His wants are constantly making themselves felt, and neces- 
sitate the purchase of other people's commodities, while the produc- 
tion and sale of his own goods require time and depend upon circum- 
stances. 

In order to be able to buy without selling, he must have sold 
previously without buying. 

This operation conducted upon a general scale, appears to im- 
ply a contradiction. 

But the precious metals, at the source of their production, are 
directly exchanged for other commodities. 

And here we have sales (by the owners of commodities) with- 
out purchasers (by the owners of gold and silver). 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 95 

And subsequent sales by other producers unfollowed by pur- 
chases, merely bringing about the distribution of newly produced 
precious metals among all the owners of commodities. 

In this way and all along the line of exchange, hoards of gold 
and silver of varied extent are accumulated. 

With the possibility of hoarding and storing up exchange val- 
ue in the shape of a particular commodity arises also the greed for 
gold. 

' Along with the extension of circulation increases the power of 
money, that absolute form of social wealth ever ready for use. 

"Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever possesses it is lord of 
all he wants. 

"By means of gold one can even get souls out of paradise." 
(Columbus in his letter from Jamaica, 1503) . 

Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into 
it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. 

Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation 
becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to 
come out again a gold crystal. 

Not even are the bones of the saints, and still less are the 
more delicate, besides most sacred, things— sensual human inter- 
course—able to withstand this alchemy. 

Note.— Henry III., most Christian king of France, robbed 
cloisters of their relics and turned them into money. It is well 
known what part of the despoiling of the Delphic Temple, by the 
Phocians, played in the history of Greece. 

Temples with the ancients served as the dwellings of the gods 
of commodities, they were "sacred banks." With the Phoenicians, 
a trading people par excellence, money was the transmuted shape of 
everything. 

It was, therefore, quite in order that the virgins, who at the 
feast of the Goddess of Love, gave themselves up to strangers, 
should offer to the Goddess the piece of money they received. 

"Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold, 
Thus much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; 
Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant; 
.... What this, you gods? Why, this 
Will lug your priests and servants from your side; 
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads; 
This yellow slave 

Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd; 
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd, place thieves, 



96 CATECHISM OP KARL MARX's "CAPITAL. 



And give them title, knee and approbation, 

With Senators on the bench; this is it 

That makes the wappouM widow wed again; 

.... Come damned earth, 

Thou common whore of mankind.' ' 

(Shakespere: Timon of Athens). 

Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is 
extinguished in money, so money on its side, like the radical lever 
that it is, does away with all distinctions. 

But money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable 
of becoming the private properly of individuals. Thus social power becomes 
the private power of private persons. 

The ancients, therefore, denounced money as subversive of 
the economical and moral order of things. 

Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by 
the hair of the head from the bowels of the earth, greets gold as its 
Holy Grail— as the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its 
own life. 

217. A commodity in its capacity as a use-value, satisfies a 
particular want, and is a particular element of material wealth. 

But the value of a commodity measures the degree of attrac- 
tion for all other elements of material wealth, and, therefore, meas- 
ures the social wealth of its owner. 

To a barbarian owner of commodities, and even to a West 
European peasant, value is the same as value-form, and therefore to 
him an increase in his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in 
value. 

It is true that the value of money varies, at one time in conse- 
quence of a variation in its own value, at another in consequence of 
a variation in the value of commodities. 

But this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of 
gold from still containing more value than 100 ounces; nor, on the 
other hand, does it hinder the actual metallic form of this article 
from continuing to be the universal equivalent-form for all other 
commodities, and the immediate incarnation of all human labor. 

The desire after hoarding is, in its very nature, insatiable. 

In its qualitative aspect, or formally considered, money has no 
bounds to its efficacy; that is, it is the universal representative of 
material wealth, because it is directly convertible into any other 
commodity. 

But, at the same time, every actual sum of money is limited 
in amount, and, therefore, as a means of purchasing has a limited 
efficacy. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 97 

This antagonism between the quantitative limits of money and 
its qualitative boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoard- 
er in his Sisyphus-like labor of accumulating. 

It is with him like it is with the conqueror who sees in every 
new country annexed only a new boundary. 

218. In order that gold may be held as money, and made to 
form a hoard, it must be prevented from circulating, or from trans- 
forming itself into a means of enjoyment. 

A hoarder, therefore, makes a sacrifice of the lusts of the 
flesh to his gold=fetich. 

He acts in earnest up to the gospel of abstention. 

On the other hand, he can withdraw from circulation no more 
than what he has thrown into it in the shape of commodities. 

The more he produces the more he is able to sell. 

Hard work, saving, and avarice are, therefore, his three car- 
dinal virtues, and to sell much and buy little the sum of his political 
economy. 

219. By the side of the gross form of a hoard, we find also its 
aesthetic form in the possession of gold and silver articles. 

This grows with the wealth of civil society. 

In this way there is created, on the one hand, a constantly 
extended market for gold and silver, unconnected with their func- 
tions as money, and, on the other hand, a latent source of supply, 
to which recourse is had principally in times of crises and social dis- 
turbances. 

220. Hoarding serves various purposes in the economy of the 
metallic currency. 

Its first function arises out of the conditions to which the cur- 
rency of gold and silver coins is subject. 

We have seen how, along with the continual fluctuations in 
the extent and rapidity of the circulation of commodities and in their 
prices, the quantity of money current unceasingly ebbs and flows. 

This mass must, therefore, be capable of expansion and con- 
traction. 

At one time money must be attracted to act as circulating 
coin; at another, circulating coin must be repelled in order to act 
again as more or less stagnant money. 

In order that the mass of money actually current may con- 
stantly saturate the absorbing power of the circulation, it is neces- 
sary that the quantity of gold and silver, in a country, be greater 
than the quantity required to function as coin. 

This condition is filled by money taking the form of hoards. 

These reserves serve as conduits for the supply or withdrawal 



98 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



of money to or from the circulation, which in this way never over- 
flows its banks. 

b. Means of payment. 

221. In the simple form of the circulation of commodities, 
hitherto considered, we found a given value always presented to us 
in a double shape— as a commodity at one pole, as money at the op- 
posite pole. 

The owners of commodities came, therefore, in contact as the 
respective representatives of what were already equivalents. 

But with the development of circulation, conditions arise un- 
der which the alienation of commodities becomes separated, by an 
interval of time, from the realization of their prices. 

It will be sufficient to indicate the most simple of these con- 
ditions. 

One sort of article requires a longer, another a shorter, time 
for its production. 

Again, the production of different commodities depends on 
different seasons of the year. 

One sort of commodity may be born on its own market place, 
another has to make a long journey to market. 

Commodity owner No. 1 may, therefore, be ready to sell before 
No. 2 is ready to buy. 

When the same transactions are continually repeated between 
the same persons, the conditions of sale are regulated in accordance 
with the conditions of production. 

On the other hand, the use of a given commodity— of a house, 
for instance— is sold (in common parlance let) for a definite period. 

Here, it is only at the end of the term that the buyer has 
actually received the use-value of the commodity. 

He, therefore, buys it before he pays for it. 

The vendor sells an existing commodity, the purchaser buys 
as the mere representative of money; the vendor becomes a creditor, 
the purchaser becomes a debtor. 

Since the metamorphosis of commodities, or the development 
of their value-form, appears here under a new aspect, money also 
acquires a fresh function; it becomes the means of payment. 

222. The character of creditor, or debtor, results here from 
the simple circulation. 

The change in the form of that circulation stamps buyer and 
seller with this new clie. 

At first, therefore, these new parts are just as transient and 
alternating as those of seller and buyer, and are in turns played by 
the same actors. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 99 

But the opposition is not nearly so pleasant, and is far more 
capable of crystalization. 

The same character can, however, be assumed independently 
of the circulation of commodities. 

The class struggle of the ancient world took the form chiefly of 
a contest between debtors and creditors, which in Rome ended in the 
ruin of the plebeian debtors. 

They were displaced by slaves. 

In the Middle Ages the contest ended with the ruin of one 
feudal debtors, who lost -their political power, together with the eco- 
nomical basis on which it was established. 

Nevertheless, the money relation of debtor and creditor that 
existed at these two periods reflected only the deeper-lying antagon- 
ism between the general economical conditions of existence of the 
classes in question. 

223. Let us return to the circulation of commodities. 

The appearance of the two . equivalents, commodities and 
money, at the two poles of the process of sale has ceased to be sim- 
ultaneous. 

The money functions now: 

First, as a measure of value in the determination of the prices 
of the commodities sold; the price fixed by the contract measures 
the obligation of the debtor, or the sum of money he has to pay at a 
fixed date. 

Secondly, it serves as an ideal means of purchase. 

Although existing in the promise of the buyer to pay, it caus- 
es the commodity to change hands. 

It is not before the day fixed for payment that the means of 
payment actually steps into circulation; leaves the hands of the buy- 
er for that of the seller. 

The circulating medium was transformed into a hoard because 
the process stopped short after the first phase; because the convert- 
ed shape of the commodity, namely, the money, was withdrawn from 
circulation. 

The means of payment enters the circulation, but only after 
the commodity has left it. 

The money is no longer the means that brings about the pro- 
cess. 

It only brings it to a close by stepping in as the absolute form 
of the existence of exchange-value, or as the universal commodity. 

The seller turned his commodity into money in order thereby 
to satisfy some want; the hoarder did the same in order to keep his 



100 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL,." 

commodity in its money-shape, and the debtor in order to be able to 
pay; if he does not pay, his goods will be sold by the sheriff. 

The value-form of commodities is, therefore, now the end and 
aim of sale, and that owing to a social necessity springing out of the 
process of circulation itself. 

224. The buyer converts money back into commodities before 
he has turned commodities into money; in other words, he achieves 
the second metamorphosis of commodities before the first. 

The sellers' commodity circulates, and realizes its price, but 
only in the shape of a legal claim on money * 

It is converted into use- value before it has been converted into 
money. 

The completion of its first metamorphosis is followed only at a 
latter period. 

225. The obligations falling due within a given period repre- 
sents the sum of the prices of the commodities, the sale of which 
gave rise to those obligations. 

The quantity of gold necessary to realize this sum depends, in 
the first instance, on the rapidity of currency of the means of pay- 
ment. 

The quantity is conditioned by two circumstances: 

First, the relation between debtors and creditors forms a sort 
of chain, in such a way that A, when he receives money from his 
debtor B, straightway hands it over to C, his creditor, and so on. 

The second circumstance is the length of the interval between 
the different due days of the obligations. 

The continuous chain of payments or retarded first metamor- 
phosis, is essentially different from the interlacing of the series of 
metamorphosis which we considered on a former page. 

By the currency of the circulating medium the connection be- 
tween the buyers and sellers is not merely expressed. 

This connection is originated by, and exist in, the circulation 
alone. 

Contrarywise, the movement of the means of payment ex- 
presses a social relation that was in existence long before. 

226. The fact that a number of sales takes place simultane- 
ously, and side by side, limits the extent to which coin can be re- 
placed by the rapidity of currency. 

On the other hand, this fact is a new lever in economizing the 
means of payment. 

In proportion as payments are concentrated at one spot, special 
institutions and methods are developed for their liquidation. 

Such, in the Middle Ages, were the virements at Lyons. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 101 

The debts of A from B, to B from C, to C from A, and so on, 
had only to be confronted by each other in order to annul each oth- 
er, to a certain extent like positive and negative quantities. 

There thus remained only a single balance to pay. 

The greater the amount of payments concentrated, the less is 
the balance relative to the amount, and the less is the mass of the 
means of payment in circulation. 

227. The function of money as the means of payment implies 
a contradiction without a "terminus medius." 

In so far as the payments balance one another, money func- 
tions ideally as money of account; as a measure of value. 

In so far as actual payments have to be made, money does not 
serve as a circulating medium, as a mere transient agent in the in- 
terchange of products, but as the individual incarnation of social 
labor, as the universal commodity. 

This contradiction comes to a head in those phases of individu- 
al and commercial crises which are known as money crises. 

Such a crisis occurs only when the ever-lengthening chain of 
payments, and an artificial system of settling them, has been fully 
developed. 

Whenever there is a general and extensive disturbance of this 
mechanism, no matter what its cause, money becomes immediately 
transformed, from its merely ideal shape of money of account, into 
hard cash. 

Profane commodities can no longer replace it. 

The use-value of commodities become useless, and their value 
vanishes in the presence of its independent form. 

On the eve of a crisis the bourgeois, with the self-sufficiency 
that springs from intoxicated prosperity, declares money to be a vain 
imagination. 

Commodities alone are money. 

But now the cry is everywhere: Money alone is a commodity. 

As the hare pants after fresh water, so pants his soul after 
money, the only wealth. 

In a crisis, the antithesis between commodities and their value 
form, money, becomes heightened into an absolute contradiction. 

Hence, in such events, the form under which money appears 
is of no importance. 

The money famine continues, whether payments have to be 
made in gold or credit money, such as bank notes. 

228. If we now consider the sum total of money current dur- 
ing a given period, we shall find that, given the rapidity of the cur- 
rency of the circulating medium and of the means of payment, it is 



102 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



equal to the sum of the prices to be realized, plus the sum of the 
payments falling due. minus the payments that balance each other; 
minus, finally, the number of circuits in which the same piece of 
coin serves in turn as means of circulation and as means of pay- 
ment. 

Hence, even when prices, rapidity of currency, and the ex- 
tent of economy in payments is given, the quantity of money current 
and the mass of commodities circulating- duxing a given period, such 
as a day, no longer correspond. 

Money that represents commodities long withdrawn from cir- 
culation, continues to be current. 

Commodities circulate whose equivalent will not appear on the 

scene till some future day. 

Moreover the debts contracted each day, and the payments 
falling due on the same day, are quite incommensurable. 

229. Credit money springs directly out of the function of 

money as means of payment. 

Certificates of the debts owing for purchased commodities cir- 
culate for the purpose of transferring those debts to others. 

On the other hand, to the same extent the system of credit 
is extended, so is the function of money as the means of payment. 

In that character it takes various forms peculiar to itself, un- 
der which it makes itself at home in the sphere of great commercial 

transactions. 

Gold and silver coin, on the other hand, are mostly relegated 

to the sphere of retail trade. 

230. When the production of commodities has sufficiently ex. 
tended itself money begins to serve as the means of payment beyond 
the sphere of the circulation of commodities. 

It becomes the commodity that is the subject matter of all 

contracts. 

Rent, taxes, and such like payments are transformed from 

payments in kind into money payments. 

To what extent this transformation depends upon the condi- 
tion of production is shown, to take one example, by the fact that 
the Roman empire twice failed to levy all contributions in money. 

The unspeakable misery of the French agricultural population 
under Louis XIV. —a misery so elegantly denounced by Boisgillebert, 
Marshal Vaban, and others— was due not only to the weight of tax- 
es, but also to the conversion of taxes in kind to money taxes. 

« In Asia, on the other hand, the fact that the state taxes are 
chiefly composed of rents payable in kind depends upon conditions 
of production that are reproduced with the regularity of a natural 
phenomena. 



COMMODITIES AND MONEY. 103 



And this mode of payment tends, in turn, to maintain the 
ancient mode of production. 

It is one of the secrets of the conservation of the Ottoman 
Empire. 

If the foreign trade forced upon Japan by Europeans should 
lead to the substitution of money rents for rents in kind, it will be 
all up with the exemplary agriculture of that country. 

The narrow economical conditions under which that agricul- 
ture is carried on will be swept away. 

231. In every country certain days become, by habit, recog- 
nized settling days for various large and recurrent payments. 

These dates depend, apart from other revolutions in the wheel 
of reproduction, on conditions closely connected with the seasons. 

They also regulate the dates of payments that have no direct 
connection with the circulation of commodities, such as taxes, rents, 
and so on. 

The quantity of money requisite to make the payments, fall- 
ing due on those dates all over the country, causes periodical, though 
merely superficial perturbations in the economy in the medium of 
payment. 

232. From the law of the rapidity of currency of the means 
of payment, it follows that the quantity of the means of payment re- 
quired for all periodical payments, whatever their source, is in the 
inverse proportion to the length of their periods. 

233. The development of money into a medium of payment, 
makes it necessary to accumulate money against the date fixed for 
the payment of sums oweing. 

While hoarding, as a distinct mode of acquiring riches, van- 
ishes with the progress of civil society, the formation of reserves of 
the means of payment grows with the progress. 

c. Universal money. 

234. When money leaves the home sphere of circulation, it 
strips off the local garb which it there assumes as the standard of 
price, of coin, or tokens, and of a symbol of value, and returns to 
its original form of bullion. 

In the trade between the markets of the world the value of 
commodities is expressed so as to be universally recognized. 

Hence their independent value-form also, in these cases, con- 
fronts them under the shape of universal money. 

It is only in the markets of the world that money acquires, to 
the full extent the character of the commodity whose bodily form is 
also the immediate social incarnation of human labor in the abstract. 



101 C \ TECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 1 



Its real mode o( existence in this sphere adequately corren 
sponds to its ideal concept, 

235. Within the sphere of home circulation there can bo but 
one commodity which, by serving as a measure of value, becomes 

money. 

[n the markets of the world a double measure holds sway 
gold and silver. 

236. Money of the world serves as a universal means of" pay- 
ment, as the universal means of purchasing, as the universally rec- 
ognized embodiment of wealth. 

Its function as a means of payment in the settling of inter- 
national balances .is its chief one. 

Hence the watchward oi' the mercantilists — Balance of Trade. 

Gold and silver serve as international means o( purchasing 
chiefly and necessarily in those periods when the customary equilib- 
rium in the interchange of products between different nations is 
suddenly disturbed. 

And. lastly, it serves, as the universally recognized embodi- 
ment of social wealth, whenever the question is not of buying or 
paying, but oi transferring wealth from one country to another, and 
whenever this transference in the form of commodities is rendered 
impossible, either by special conjunctures in the markets, or by the 
purpose itself that is intended. 

237. Just as every country needs a reserve of money for its 
home circulation, so. too, it requires one for the external circulation 
in the markets of the world. 

The function oi' hoards, therefore, rise in part out of the func- 
tion of money as the medium of home circulation and home pay- 
ments, and in part out of the function of money of the world. 

For this latter function, the genuine money commodity, actual 
gold and silver, is necessary. 

On that account, Sir James Stuart, in order to distinguish 
them from their purely local substitutes, calls gold and silver. 
"Money of the World." 

238. The current of the stream of gold and silver is a double 
one. 

On the one hand, it spreads itself from its sources over all the 
markets o( the world in order to become absorbed, to various ex- 
tents, into the different national spheres oi' circulation, to till the 
conduits of currency, to replace abraided gold and silver coins, to 
supply the material oi' articles of luxury, and to petrify into hoards. 

The first current is started by [the countries that exchange 
their labor, realized in commodities, for the labor embodied in the 



CAPITAL. 105 

precious metals by gold and silver producing countries. 

On the other hand, there is a continual flowing backwards 
and forwards of gold and silver between the different national 
spheres of circulation— a current whose motion depends on the cease- 
less fluctuations in the course of exchange. 

239. Countries in which the bourgeois form of production is 
developed, to a certain extent, limit the hoards concentrated in the 
strong rooms of the banks to the minimum required for the proper 
performance of their peculiar functions. 

Whenever these hoards are strikingly above their average 
level, it is, with some exceptions, an indication of stagnation in the 
circulation of commodities, or an interruption in the even flow of 
their metamorphoses. 



Part II. 



The Transformation of Money Into Capital. 



CHAPTER IV. THE GENERAL FORMULA OF CAPITAL. 

What is the starting point of capital ? The circulation of com- 
modities. 

The production of commodities, their circulation, and that 
more developed form of their circulation called commerce, these 
form the historical ground work from which it arises. 

The modern history of capital dates from the creation, in the 
sixteenth century, of a world embracing commerce and a world em- 
bracing market. 

If we abstract from the material substance— the different use- 
values— exchanged and consider only the economic forms produced by 
the circulation of commodities, what is the final result? Money. 

This is the first form in which capital appears. 



106 CATECHISM OP KAKL makx's ' "i\ i *i r A I .. " 

As a matter o( history, capital, as opposed to landed property] 
invariably takes the form, at first, o( money; it appears as moneyed 
wealth, as the capital oi the merchant ami usurer. 

How does all new capital come on the market? Whether o( 
commodities, labor, or money, it comes o\-> the market in the shape 
o( money that by a definite process has to be transformed into 
capital. 

What distinction do we first see. between money, that is 
money only. and. money that is. capital? Merely the difference in 
their form of circulation. 

What is the simplest form o\ the circulation ol commodities? 
C M C, selling in order to buy. 

What is the specifically different form. o( the circulation o( 
the capital? M C M. buying in order to sell. 

Money that circulates in the circuit M C M. is thereby 
transformed into, is potentially capital. 

What have these two forms in common? Both circuits are 
resolvable into the same two antithetical phases. C M, a sale, and 
M C a purchase. 

In each of these phases the same material elements a com- 
modity and money, and the same dramatical characters,— a buyer 
and seller confront one another. 

Bach circuit is the unity o\ the same two antithetical phases. 

And. in each case this unity is brought about by the interven- 
tion o\ three contracting- parties, of whom one only sells, another 
only buys, while the third both buys and sells. 

What are the most distinguished features between C — M— C 
and M C M? The inverted order of succession of the two phases. 

The circulation of commodities begins and ends with a com- 
modity: the movement is brought about by the intervention of 
money . 

What is the purpose aimed at? The exchange of labor em- 
bodied in one commodity, which is not a use-value to its owner, for 
the same amount of labor embodied in another commodity, which is 
a use-value to him. 

For example, a farmer exchanges corn for money, and with 
the money purchases clothes. 

If we leave out the intermediary mone> we have — corn ex- 
changed for clothes a commodity exchanged for a commodity of 
equal value but of different quality: C M ends with a commod- 
ity, which falls out of circulation into consumption, the satisfaction 
of wants, it thus fulfills the purpose aimed at. 



CAPITAL. 107 

How does the inverted order of succession differ from M C — 

M? The circuit M— C— M begins and ends with money. 

What is its purpose and aim? The exchange of money for 
more money, for if we leave out the intermediary commodity it is 
an exchange of money for money. 

In this circuit, M— C — M, money is transformed from money, 
as mere money, into capital. 

If a merchant buys one ton of cotton for $100, and resells it 
for $110, he has, in fact, exchanged $100 for $110— money for more 
money. 

The exact form of this process is, therefore, M — C— M, where 
M M plus M 1 , the original sum plus an increment. 

This excess over the original value is what I call "surplus 
value." 

The value originally advanced, not only remains intact, while 
in circulation, but adds to itself surplus-value. 

It is this movement that converts it into capital. 

If now the $110 be spent as money, what is the result? They 
no longer play their part, and are no longer capital. 

If withdrawn from circulation they petrify into a hoard, and 
though they remain in that state till doomsday, not a single cent 
would accrue to them. 

If the expansion of value is aimed at there is just as much in- 
ducement to augment the $110 as that of the $100. 

The circulation of commodities is a means of carrying out a 
purpose unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of 
use- values— the satisfaction of wants. 

The circulation of money, as capital, is an end in itself, for 
the expansion takes place only within the constantly renewed move- 
ments. 

Thus the conscious representative of this movement, the pos- 
sessor of money, becomes a capitalist. 

What is the real aim of a capitalist? The restless never-end- 
ing process of profit making alone. 

And it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and 
more wealth, in the abstract, becomes the sole motive of his opera- 
tions that he functions as a capitalist. 

If we take in turn each of the two different forms which self- 
expanding value assumes in the course of its life, we arrive at these 
two propositions: Capital is money; capital is commodities. 

Value is the active factor in the process, it continually changes 
its form; at one time it is money, at another it is commodities. 

At the same time it changes its form it changes its magni- 



108 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

tude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; 
the original value expands spontaneously. 

Money itself is only one of the two forms of value, and unless 
it takes the form of some commodity it does not become capital. 

Buying in order to sell, or, speaking more accurately, buying 
to sell dearer, M— C— M, appears certainly to be a form peculiar to 
one kind of capital alone; namely, merchants' capital. 

But industrial capital, too, is money that is changed into com- 
modities, and by the sale of these commodities is reconverted into 
money. 

The events that take place outside the sphere of circulation, in 
the interval between buying and selling, da not affect the form of 
this movement. 

Lastly, in the case of interest-bearing capital the circulation is 
abridged. 

We have the result without the intermediary stage, in the 
form of M— M; money that is worth more money, value that is 
greater than itself. 

M— C— M is, in reality, the general formula of capital as it ap- 
pears prima facie within the sphere of circulation. 



CHAPTER V. CONTRADICTIONS IN THE GENERAL 
FORMULA OF CAPITAL. 

The form which circulation takes when money becomes capi- 
tal is opposed to all the laws we have hitherto investigated bearing 
on the nature of commodities, value, money, and even of circulation 
itself. 

What distinguishes this form from the simple Circulation of 
commodities is the inverted order of succession of the two antitheti- 
cal processes, sale and purchase. 

How can this purely formal distinction between these pro- 
cesses change their character, as it were by magic? The inverted 
order of succession does not take us outside the sphere of circulation 
of commodities. 

What, then, must we first find out? If there is in the simple 
circulation of commodities anything permitting an expansion of val- 
ue that enters into circulation. 

Let us take the process of circulation in a form under which it 
presents itself as a simple and direct exchange of commodities. 

This is always the case where two owners of commodities buy 



CAPITAL. 109 

from each other, and on the settling day, the amounts mutually owe- 
ing are equal and balance each other. 

The money in this case is money of account, and serves to ex- 
press the value of the commodities by their price, but it is not itself 
in the shape of hard cash confronted by them. 

How can there be any gain in the exchange of equivalents? 
Both part with goods that, as use-values, are of no service to them, 
and receive others that they can make use of. 

Again, A who sells wine and buys corn from B, possibly pro- 
duces more wine with given labor-time than B could, and B, on the 
other hand, more corn than wine-grower A could. 

A, therefore, may get, for the same exchange value, more 
corn and B more wine, than each would respectively get by produc- 
ing their own corn and wine. 

With reference to use-value there is good ground for saying 
that exchange is a transaction in which both sides gain. 

But this has reference to use- value only. 

Can there be any increase of value by simple circulation? In 
the simple circulation of commodities there is nothing but the mere 
change of form of the commodities; the same exchange value re- 
mains throughout in the hands of the owner of the commodity, first 
in the shape of his own commodity, then in the form of money for 
which he exchanged it, and, lastly, in the shape of the commodity 
he buys with the money. 

If commodities, or commodities and money of equal value are 
exchanged, it is plain that no one can extract more from circulation 
than he throws into it. 

What then is the incentive to the act of exchange of commodi- 
ties? The material varieties of these commodities makes buyers and 
sellers mutually dependent, because none of them possess the objects 
of his own wants, and each holds in his hand the object of another's 
wants. 

As we can find no increase of value in the exchange of equiva- 
lents, how must we now deal with circulation? Assume the ex- 
change of non-equivalents. 

Suppose, then, by some inexplicable privilege, the seller is 
enabled to sell his commodities above their value, what is worth 
$100 for $110, in which the price is nominally raised 10 per cent. 

After he has sold he becomes a buyer, and meets a third com- 
modity owner who is a seller, and also enjoys the privilege of selling 
10 per cent too dear. 

The net result is, that all commodity owners sell their goods 



110 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

to one another 10 per cent above their value, which amounts to the 
same thing as to sell them at their true value. 

If we make the opposite assumption, that the buyer has the 
privilege of buying 10 per cent below the value of the goods he buys, 
he lost 10 per cent as seller before he bought, the result is just the 
same. 

The creation of surplus-value, that which turns money into 
capital, can be explained neither on the assumption that commodi- 
ties are sold above their value, nor that they are bought belo.w their 
value. 

Let us try again, perhaps our difficulty may have arisen from 
treating the actors as personifications instead of individuals. 

A may be clever enough to get the advantage of B or C with- 
out their being able to retaliate. 

A sells wine, worth $40 to B, and gets from him corn to the 
value of $50. A has converted his $40 into $50, has made more 
money out of less, has turned his commodities into capital. 

Before the exchange we had $40 worth of wine in the hands 
of A and $50 worth of corn in the hands of B, a total value of $90. 

After the exchange we have the same total value of $90. 

The value has not increased one iota; it is only distributed dif- 
ferently between A and B; the result would be the same if A had 
directly stolen $10 from B. 

The sum of values in circulation can clearly not be augmented 
by a change in their distribution. 

The capitalist class, as a whole, in any country, cannot over- 
reach themselves. Turn and twist them as we may the fact remains 
unaltered. 

If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if 
non-equivalents are exchanged, still no surplus- value; circulation, or 
the exchange of commodities, begets no value. 

The reason is now plain why, in analyzing the standard form 
of capital— the form under which capital determines the economic 
organization of modern society— we left out of consideration its most 
popular, and antideluvian forms, merchant's capital and money- 
lender's capital. 

The circuit M— C— M, buying in order to sell dearer, is seen 
most clearly in genuine merchants' capital 

Since the movement takes place entirely within the sphere of 
circulation, and, that there can be no formation of surplus-values in 
circulation alone. 

It can only have its origin in the twofold advantage gained, 
over both the selling and buying producers, by the merchant who 
parasitically shoves himself in between them. 



CAPITAL. Ill 

This applies still more to money-lender's capital. 

It is reduced to the two extremes without a mean, M — M: 
money exchanged for more money. 

A form that is incompatible with the nature of money, and 
therefore remains inexplicable from the standpoint of the circulation 
of commodities. 

Aristotal says: "Since schrematistic is a double science, one 
part belonging to commerce, the other to economics, the latter being 
necessary and praiseworthy, the former based upon circulation and 
with justice disapproved (for it is not based on nature, but on mu- 
tual cheating) , therefore the usurer is most rightly hated, because 
money itself is the source of his gain, and is not used for the pur- 
pose for which it was invented." 

For it originated for the exchange of commodities, but inter- 
est makes out of money more money. 

The begotten are like those who beget them. 

But interest is money of money, so that of all modes of mak- 
ing a living this is the most contrary to nature. 

Merchant's capital and interest bearing capital are derivative 
forms, and appear in the course of history before the modern stand- 
ard form of capital. 

We have shown that surplus- value cannot be created by circu- 
lation, and, therefore, that in its formation something must take 
place in the background which is not apparent in the circulation 
itself. 

But can surplus- value possibly originate anywhere else than 
in circulation, which is the sum total of all the mutual relations of 
commodity-owners so far as they are determined by their commodi- 
ties? 

Apart from circulation, the commodity-owner is in relation 
only with his own commodity. So far as regards value, that relation 
is limited to this: That the commodity contains a quantity of his 
own labor, that quantity being measured by a definite social standard. 

This quantity is expressed by the value of the commodity, and 
since the value is reckoned in money of account, this quantity is also 
expressed by the price, which we will suppose to be $10. 

But his labor is not represented both by the value of the com- 
modity and by a surplus over that value, not by a price of 10 that is 
also a price of 11; not by a value that is greater than itself. 

The commodity-owner can, by his labor, create value, but not 
self -expanding value. 

He can increase the value of his commodity by adding fresh 
labor, and, therefore, more value to the value in hand, by making, 
for instance, leather into boots. 



1 1- CATECHISM OF CARL MAKX's "CAPITAL." 

The same material has now more value, because it contains a 
greater quantity of labor. 

The boots have, therefore, more value than the leather, but 
the value of the leather remains what it was; it has not expanded itself — 
has not, during the making of the boots, annexed surplus-value. 

It is therefore impossible that, outside the sphere of circula- 
tion, a producer can, without coming into contact with other com- 
modity-owners, expand value, and consequently convert money or 
commodities into capital. 

It is impossible for capital to be produced by circulation, and 
it is equally impossible for it to originate apart from circulation. 

It must have its origin both in circulation and yet not in cir- 
culation. We have got a double result. 

The conversion of money into capital has to be explained on 
the basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities, in 
such a way that the starting point is the exchange of equivalents. 

Our friend Moneybags, who as yet is only an embryo capital- 
ist, must buy his commodities at their value, must sell them at their 
value, and yet at the end of the process must withdraw more value 
from circulation than he threw into it. 

His development into a full-grown capitalist must take place, 
both within the sphere of circulation and without it. 

These are the conditions of the problem. 

Hie Rhodus, Hie Salta! (here is the rose, now dance). 

CHAPTER VI. THE BUYING AND SELLING OF 
LABOR-POWER. 

We have seen that there can be no surplus-value created by 
the act of exchange, nor can any change of value take place in the 
money, either as a medium of exchange nor as a means of payment, 
as hard cash it is value petrified, never varying. 

Then where must the change take place? In the commodity 
bought, but not in its value, for it is paid for at its full value, equiv- 
alents are exchanged. 

We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that the change 
originates in the consumption of the commodity. 

To extract value from the consumption, our friend Moneybags 
must find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a com- 
modity possessing the peculiar property of being itself an embodi- 
ment of labor and also whose actual consumption is the creating of 
value. 

The possessor of money does find such a special commodity in 
labor-power. 



BUYING AND SELLING OF LABOR-POWER. 113 

What is labor-power? Those mental and physical capabilities 
existing in a human being, which he uses whenever he produces a 
use-value of any description. 

The owner of money can find labor-power offered for sale as a 
commodity, only under certain conditions. 

What are these conditions? First, there must be free labor- 
ers — free in the double sense, free to dispose of his labor-power, as 
his own commodity, and free from all the means of production, 
whereby he could realize the fruit of his labor-power. 

Second, he must look upon his labor as his own property, his 
own commodity. 

To do this he can sell it only for a definite period, for were he 
to sell it once for all, he would renounce his ownership over it, sell 
himself, and become himself a commodity— a slave. 

Let us examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labor- 
power. 

Like all others, it has value. 

How is this value determined? By the labor-time necessary 
for its production, and consequently also for the reproduction of this 
special article. 

So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite 
quantity of the average labor of society incorporated in it. 

The labor-time requisite for the production of labor-power re- 
duces itself to that necessary for the production of the means of 
subsistence. 

Labor-power becomes a reality only by its exercise, it sets 
itself in action only by working. 

Thereby a definite quantity of brains, muscles and nerves, 
etc., is wasted, and these require to be restored. 

If the owner of labor-power works today, tomorrow he must 
again be able to repeat the process in the same condition as regards 
health and strength. 

His means of subsistence must, therefore, be sufficient to 
maintain him in his normal state as a laboring individual. 

The owner of labor power is mortal, and the conversion of 
money into capital assumes that the laborer must perpetuate him- 
self. 

The labor-power withdrawn from the market by wear and 
tear and death must be replaced by, at least, an equal amount of 
fresh labor-power. 

Hence the sum of the means of subsistence must include the 
means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the family. 



114 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

The value of labor-power resolves itself into the value of a 
definite quantity of the means of subsistence. 

It therefore varies with the value of the means, or with the 
quantity of labor requisite for their production. 

Some of the means of subsistence, such as food and fuel, are 
consumed daily, and a fresh supply must be provided daily. 

Others, such as clothes and furniture, last for longer periods, 
and are replaced only at longer periods. 

One article must be bought, and paid for, daily, another week- 
ly, another quarterly, and so on. 

If the total of the commodities required daily for the produc- 
tion of labor-power=A, and those required weekly— B, and those 
required quarterly=C the daily average of these commodities=365 
A plus 52 B plus 4 C divided by 365. 

Suppose that in the amount of commodities requisite for the 
average day there is incorporated two hours of social labor, then two 
hours social labor forms the value of a day's labor-power. 

If two hours social labor is incorporated in $2, then $2 is the 
price corresponding to the value of a day's labor-power. 

Our friend Moneybags, who is intent on turning his $2 into 
capital, pays this value. 

The minimum limit of the value of labor-power is determined 
by the value of the means of subsistence physically indispensable. 

If the price of labor-power fall to this minimum it falls below 
its value, for under such circumstances it can be maintained and de- 
veloped only in a crippled state. 

But the value of every commodity is determined by the labor- 
time requisite to turn it out in a normal state. 

The labor-power is sold, although it is not paid for until a lat- 
er date. 

It will be useful for a clear understanding of the relation be- 
tween the parties, to assume that the possessor of labor-power, on 
the occasion of each sale, immediately receives the price to be paid 
for it. 

We know now how the value paid by the purchaser of this 
peculiar commodity, labor-power, is determined. 

The consumption of labor-power is at one and the same time 
the production of commodities, and of surplus-value. 

The money owner buys everything necessary for this purpose. 

The consumption of labor-power, like the consumption of any 
other commodity, takes place outside the sphere of circulation. 

Accompanied by both Mr. Moneybags and the possessor of 
labor-power, we take leave, for a time, of this noisy sphere, and fol- 



BUYING AND SELLING OF LABOR-POWER. 115 

low them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose thres- 
hold there stares us in the face: "No admittance except on business." 

Here we will see, not only how capital produces, but how capi- 
tal is produced. 

We shall at last force the secret of profit making. 

The sphere we are deserting, in which the sale and purchase 
of labor-power goes on, is a very Eden of the innate rights of man. 

There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham. 

Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity — 
labor-power— are constrained only by their own free will. 

They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to 
is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common 
will. 

Equality, because each enter into relation with the other, as 
with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent 
for equivalent. 

Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. 

And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. 

The only force that brings them together and puts them in re- 
lation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain, and the private 
interest of each. 

Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about 
the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with 
the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an 
all-shrewd providence, work together for their mutual advantage, 
for the common weal and in the interest of all. 

On leaving the sphere of simple circulation, or of exchange 
of commodities, which furnishes the "Free-Trader Vulgaris" with 
his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a so- 
ciety based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change 
in physiognomy of our dramatic characters. 

He who before was the money-owner now strides in front as 
capitalist; the possessor of labor-power follows as his laborer. 

The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on busi- 
ness; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing 
his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but— a hiding. 



116 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



Part III. 



The Production of Absolute Surplus>Value. 



CHAPTER VII. THE LABOR -PROCESS AND THE PROCESS 
OF PRODUCING SURPLUS-VALUE. 

Section 1. The labor=process, or the production of use=value. 

The capitalist buys labor-power in order to use it. 

He consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. 

By working the latter becomes actually, what before he only 
was potentially, labor-power in action, a laborer. 

In order that his labor may reappear in a commodity he must 
expend it on some useful thing, on something capable of satisfying 
a want of some sort. 

Hence the capitalist sets him to work at producing a use- value, 
a specific article. 

Labor is a process in which both man and nature participate, 
and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls 
the material reaction between himself and nature. 

He opposes himself to nature as one of her own forces, setting 
in motion arms, legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, 
in order to appropriate nature's productions in a form adapted to his 
own wants. 

Besides the exertions of the bodily organs, the process de- 
mands that, during the whole operation, the workman's will be 
steadily in consonance with his purpose. 

This means close attention. 

The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the 



THE LABOR-PROCESS. 117 



less he enjoys it as something that gives play to his mental and 
bodily powers, the closer his attention is forced to be. 

The elementary factors of the process are: 
First. The personal activity of man— work itself; 
Second. The subject of that work; 
Third. Its instruments. 

The soil (economically speaking this includes water) in the 
virgin state in which it supplies man with necessaries or the means 
of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the 
universal subject of human labor. 

All those things which labor merely separates from immediate 
connection with their environment are subjects of labor spontane- 
ously provided by nature. 

Such are fish, which we catch and take from their element, 
the water; timber, which we fell in the virgin forest; and ores, 
which we extract from their veins. 

If the subject of labor has passed through labor we call it raw 
material; such is ore already extracted and ready for smelting. 

All raw material is the subject of labor, but every subject of 
labor is not raw material; it can only become so by having under- 
gone some alteration by means of labor. 

Instruments of labor. 

An instrument of labor is a thing, or complex of things 
(machine), which the laborer interposes between himself and the 
subject of his labor, and which serves as the conductor of his ac- 
tivity. 

The first thing of which the laborer possesses himself is not 
the subject of labor, but the instrument. 

Among the instruments of labor, those of a mechanical nature, 
which, taken as a whole, we may call the bones and muscles of pro- 
duction, those such as pipes, tubs, jars, baskets, etc., which serve 
only to hold the materials for labor we may call the vascular system 
of production. 

In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of 
labor, all such objects as are necessary for carrying on the labor 
process. 

We find the earth to be a universal instrument of this sort, 
for it furnishes a standing place for the laborer, and a field of em- 
ployment for his activities. 

Among instruments that are the result of previous labor, and 
also belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, railroads, etc. 

In the labor process, therefore, man's activity, with the help 



1 IS CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. " 

of the instruments of labor, effects an alteration in the material 
worked upon. 

The process disappears in the product ; the latter is a use- 
value, nature's material adapted by a change of form to the wants 
of man. 

Labor has incorporated itself with its subject; the former is 
materialized, the latter transformed. 

That which in the laborer appeared as movement now appears 
in the product as a fixed quality without motion. 

The blacksmith forges, and the product is a forging. 

If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its 
result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and subject 
of labor are means of production, and that labor itself is productive 
labor. 

Raw material may either form the principle substance of a 
product, or may enter into its formation only as an accessory. 

An accessory may be consumed by the instrument of labor, 
as coal under a boiler, oil by a wheel, hay by a draft horse, or it may 
help to carry on the work itself, as materials used for heating and 
lighting workshops. 

One and the same product may serve as raw material in very 
different processes. 

Every object possesses various properties and is capable of 
being applied to different uses, and may serve as raw material in 
very different processes. 

For example, corn is a raw material for millers, starch manu- 
facturers, and cattle breeders, and also in its own production, as 
seed ; coal too, is the product of, and at the same time, also the 
means of production in, coal-mining. 

Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same 
process, both as instruments of labor and as raw material. 

Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal 
is raw material and at the same time an instrument for the produc- 
tion of manure. 

Hence, whether a use-value is to be regarded as raw material, 
as instrument of labor, or as product, is determined entirely by its 
function in the labor process, by the position it there occupies ; as 
this varies so does its character. 

A machine which does not serve the purpose of labor is useless. 

In addition, it falls a prey to the destructive influence of nat- 
ural forces. Iron rusts and wood rots. 

Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit is cotton wasted. 

Living labor must seize upon these things and arouse them 



THE LABOR-PROCESS. 119 



from their death sleep, change them from mere possible use-values 
into real and effective ones. 

Bathed in the fire of labor, appropriated as part and parcel of 
labor's organism, and made alive for the performance of their func- 
tions in the process, they are in truth consumed, but consumed with 
a purpose, as elementary constituents of new use-values, of new 
products, ever ready as means of subsistence for individual consump- 
tion, or as means of production for some new labor-process. 

Labor uses up its material factors, its subject and its instru- 
ments ; consumes them, and is, therefore, a process of consumption. 

Let us now return to our would-be capitalist. 

We left him just after he had purchased all the necessary fac- 
tors of the labor-process ; its objective factors, the means of produc- 
tion, as well as its subjective factor labor power. 

He has selected the means of production and the kind of 
labor-power best adapted to his particular trade. 

He then proceeds to consume the commodity, labor-power, by 
causing the laborer to consume the means of production by his labor. 

The labor-process, turned into the process by which the capi- 
talist consumes labor-power, exhibits two characteristic phenomena. 

First, the laborer works under control of the capitalist, to 
whom his labor belongs ; the capitalist taking good care that the 
work is done in a proper manner, and that there is no waste of raw 
material, and no more wear and tear of the implements than is nec- 
essary to do the work. 

Secondly, the capitalist pays for a day's labor-power, and the 
use of that labor-power for a day belongs to him. 

The seller in giving his labor does no more in reality than part 
with a use-value that he has sold. 

The labor-process is a process between things that the capi- 
talist has purchased, things that have become his property. The 
product of this process belongs to him just as much as does the wine 
which is the product of a process of fermentation completed in his 
cellar. 

Section 2.— The Production of Surplus=Values. 

It must be borne in mind that we are now dealing with the 
production of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have only 
considered one aspect of the process. 

Just as commodities are, at the same time, use-values and val- 
ues, so the process of producing them must be a labor-process, and 
at the same time a process of creating value. 

Let us now examine production as a creation of value. 



120 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

We know that the value of each commodity is determined by 
the, social necessary, labor-time spent in its production. 

This rule also holds good in the case of the product that ac- 
crued to our capitalist as the result of the labor-process carried on 
for him. 

Assuming this product to be 100 pounds of yarn, our first step 
is to calculate the quantity of labor realized in it. 

First our capitalist must purchase a spinning machine, as it is 
a necessary instrument in the production of yarn. 

We will assume that for each 100 pounds of yarn spun that 
the wear and tear of the machine is equal to one hour's labor time, 
and this will include also the buildings— factory— and other acces- 
sories. 

We will assume that six hours' labor-time is embodied in the 
100 pounds of cotton. 

We will assume that in one day's labor-power there is embod- 
ied two hours' labor-time. 

That is, a laborer will consume in 24 hours, at the standard of 
living, prevalent at the time, food, clothing and shelter, to the 
amount that will require 2 hours' labor-time to produce them. 

We treat the labor expended in the production of raw material 
and the means of production as labor expended in the earlier stages 
of spinning. 

We will further assume that it requires one hour's labor-time 
to produce $1.00. 

Hence our capitalist has paid, at their full value, for the raw 
material— cotton— $6.00 for the means of production— factory and 
machinery that enters in the product yarn— $1, for labor power $2. 
Total, $9. 

The value of the raw material and the factory and accessories 
never vary no matter what form they may take. 

Now our capitalist starts his labor-power to work transform- 
ing his cotton into yarn. 

And finds at the end of one hour twelve and one-half pounds 
of cotton has been transformed into yarn, that twelve and one-half 
pounds of yarn has one hour's more labor embodied in it than was 
embodied in the cotton, hence $1 in value has been added to the cot- 
ton, and yarn has a value of 15 cents per pound. 

At the end of the next hour 25 pounds of cotton has been con- 
verted into yarn, the value of $2 has been added to 25 pounds of 
cotton. 

Should the process stop here, our capitalist would be in a bad 
predicament. 



THE LABOR-PROCESS. 121 



The cost of raw material and means of production are equal 
to : Factory and cotton (7 cent per pound), 25 pounds, $1.75 ; labor- 
power, $2.00; total, $3.75. 

Value of 25 pounds of yarn (15 cents per pound), $3.75. 

Stock on hand, 75 pounds of cotton 7 cents per pound, $5.25, 
added to the value of the yarn, $3.75, is $9, the same value he 
started with, no surplus value has been created. 

But our capitalist is fully alive to the situation. 

He says, it is true that the past labor embodied in one day's 
labor-power is but 2 hours, yet that is no concern of mine. 

What I bought was the use- value, and I am entitled to the use 
of the labor-power for such a length of time as will not exhaust 
more energy than can be restored during that portion of the 24 hours 
that it is not at work. 

Here is the bone of contention between "capital and labor." 
"Capital" wants it to be exercised as long as possible, and "labor" 
is ever trying to shorten the working portion of the 24 hours. 

However, our capitalist does get the use of the labor-power 
during 8 hours. 

As one hour of labor creates the same value as another, every 
hour there is added $1 value to the cotton used up in producing the 
yarn. 

The first two hours labor has created a value as great as the 
value of one day's labor-power. 

And every 2 hours thereafter it creates a surplus-value equal 
to itself. 

Hence in 8 hours the value added to the yarn is $8, or four 
times as great as the value of the day's labor-power. 

At last the trick is turned. 

Our capitalist paid out, for the raw material and means of 
production, $9, which has been converted into a commodity with a 
value of $15. Labor has created a surplus-value of $6, and money 
has been turned into capital. 

If we now compare the two processes of producing value and 
of creating surplus-value, we see that the latter is nothing but the 
continuation of the former beyond a definite point. 

We also see that the difference between labor, considered on 
the one hand as producing utilities, and on the other hand as creat- 
ing values, resolves itself into a distinction between two aspects of 
the process of production. 

The process of production considered as unity of the labor- 
cess and the process of creating value, is production of commodities. 

The process of production considered as the unity of the labor- 



122 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



process and the process of creating surplus-value, is the capitalist 
process of production, or capitalist production of commodities. 



CHAPTER VIII. CONSTANT CAPITAL AND 
VARIABLE CAPITAL. 

The various factors of the labor process play different parts in 
forming the value of the product. 

The laborer adds fresh value to the subject of his labor by ex- 
pending upon it additional labor. 

The values of the means of production are preserved, and pre- 
sent themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the 
products. 

The values of the means of production pass over to the pro- 
ducts, and are thus preserved. 

This transfer takes place during the labor-process, it is brought 
about by labor; but how? The laborer does not perform two opera- 
tions at once. 

One in order to transfer the value of the cotton and part of 
the value of the spindle worn away, to the yarn, and another to add 
value to the cotton. 

The two results, adding fresh value and preserving the form- 
er values, are brought about by one and the same operation. This is 
due to the twofold character of labor. 

Now, if a use-value be effectually consumed in the production 
of a new use-value, the quantity of labor expended in the production 
of the consumed article forms a part of the labor necessary to pro- 
duce the new use-value. 

Hence it is in the character of concrete useful labor, applied 
with a definite aim, to produce some particular use- value that labor 
preserves values. 

While it is in the character of abstract labor, applied with an 
aim to produce values, that labor creates surplus-values. 

An interesting phenomenon here presents itself. 

Suppose a machine to be worth $1,000 and to wear away in 
1,000 days. 

Then one-thousandth part of the value of the machine is daily 
transferred to the day's product. 

At the same time, though with diminishing vitality, the ma- 
chine as a whole continues to take part in the labor-process, while as 
an element of the formation of value it only enters by fractions. 

On the other hand, the means of production may take part as 



CONSTANT CAPITAL AND VARIABLE CAPITAL. 123 



a whole in the formation of value, while at the same time it enters 
into the labor-process only bit by bit. 

If in the production of 100 pounds of yarn it is necessary that 
15 pounds of cotton goes to waste, then 115 pounds of cotton is 
necessary for the production of 100 pounds of yarn and the 15 
pounds of waste enters into the labor-process only bit by bit and it 
enters as a whole in the value of the yarn. 

The same holds good for every kind of refuse not capable of 
forming a new and independent use-value. 

The means of production transfers value to the new product 
only in so far, as during the labor-process, they lose value in the 
shape of their old use-value. 

However useful a given kind of raw material, or a machine, 
or other means of production may be, though it may cost $4,000, or 
500 days, it cannot, under any circumstances, add to the value of 
the product more than $4,000. 

Its value is determined, not by the labor-process which it en- 
ters as a means of production, but by that out of which it has issued 
as a product. 

The property which labor-power in action possesses of preserv- 
ing value at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of nature, which 
costs the laborer nothing, but which is very advantageous to the 
capitalist, inasmuch as it preserves the existing value of the capital. 

As regards the means of production, what is really consumed 
is their use- value, and the consumption of this use- value results in 
the product. 

There is no consumption of their values; therefore, they are 
not reproduced. 

We now see the different parts played by the various factors 
of the labor-process in the formation of the product's value. 

That part of capital which represents the means of production 
—raw material, machinery, auxiliary material, and instruments of 
labor— does not undergo any alteration in value. 

I, therefore, call it the constant part of capital, or, more short- 
ly, constant capital. 

The part of capital represented by labor-power does undergo 
an alteration in value; it both produces the equivalent of its own val- 
ue, and also a surplus-value, which may vary with circumstances. 

The more productive the labor the greater the surplus-value 
created by it, and vise versa* 



124 CAT EC 1 1 ISM OF KARL MARX'S ''CAPITAL. 



CHAPTER IX. THE RATE OF SURPLUS- VALUE. 

Section I. The degree of exploitation of labor. 

The surplus-value generated in the process of production pre- 
sents itself for our consideration as the amount by which the value 
of the product exceeds the value of its constituent elements. 

The capital C is made up of two components, one c the sum of 
money laid out upon the means of production, and the other sum of 
money v expended upon the labor-power; C represents capital; c 
constant capital; and v variable capital; s surplus- value. 

At first then, C=c v; for example: if $500 is the capital ad- 
vanced, its components may be such that $500— $410 constant plus 
$90 variable. 

When the product is finished we get a commodity whose value 
= (c plus v) plus s, $410 plus v, $90, plus s $90, value of product, 
$590. 

The original capital has changed from C $500 to C $590. 

We have seen how that portion of the constant capital which 
consists of the instruments of labor transfers to the product only a 
fraction of its value, while the remainder of that value continues to 
reside in those instruments. 

To introduce it into the calculation would make no difference. 

For instance, take our example: 

Suppose this sum to consist of $312 value of raw material, $44 
value of auxiliary material, and $54 value of the machinery worn 
away in the process, supposed that the value of the machinery em- 
ployed is $1,054. If we reckon the remaining $1,000 as transferred 
to the product, we should also reckon it as advanced; then we would 
get $1,500 C and $1,590 C\ still leaving $90 as the surplus. 

The formula C^c plus v which we saw was transformed into 
into C = (c plus v) plus s, C becoming C . 

We know that the value of the constant capital is transferred 
to and reappears in the product. 

The new value actually created in the process is not the same 
as the value of the product. 

It is not as it would at first sight appear (c plus) s, but v plus 
s, $90 variable plus $90 surplus— not $590 but $180. 



THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE. 125 

If there were branches of industry in which the capitalist 
could dispense with all the means of production made by previous 
labor, employing only labor-power and materials supplied by nature, 
there would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. 

The component of the value of the product, that is the $410 
in our example would be eliminated. 

Our formula would then be, C'=(0 plus v) plus s, or v plus s 
—$90 variable capital plus the $90 surplus, $180 the value of the pro- 
duct. The capital invested in labor-power is a definite quantity of 
materialized labor, a constant value, like the value of the labor- 
power purchased. 

But in the process of production the place of the $90 is taken 
by the labor-power in action ; dead labor is replaced by living labor, 
something stagnant by something flowing, a constant by a variable. 

The result is the reproduction of v plus an increment of v. 

From this point of view, then, of capitalist production, the 
whole process appears as the spontaneous variation of the original 
constant value which is transformed into labor power. 

Both the process and its results appear to be oweing to this 
value. 

If such expressions as $90 variable or "so much self-expanded 
value, ' ' appear contradictory, this is only because they bring to the 
surface a contradiction immanent in capitalist production. 

At first sight it appears a strange proceeding to equate the 
constant capital to zero. 

Yet this is what we do every day. 

If we wish to calculate the amount of England's profit from 
the cotton industry, we first of all deduct the sum paid for cotton to 
the United States, India, Egypt, and other countries. 

The value of the constant capital is put=0. 

Given the new value produced =^$180, subtract from it $90, 
the value of the variable capital, we have remaining $90 the amount 
of the surplus value. 

The ratio of the surplus value to the variable capital is ex- 
pressed by s:v. 

In our example, this ratio is 90:90 or 100 per cent. 

This relative increase in the value of variable capital, I call 
"the rate of surplus value." 

The portion of the work-day that it requires to produce an 
equivalent of the labor embodied in the laborer— the time necessary 
to produce the subsistence of life, I call necessary labor-time, and 
the labor expended during that time I call necessary labor. 

Necessary as regards the laborer, and necessary as regards 



126 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

the capitalist, because upon the existence of the laborer depends the 
existence of the capitalist. 

During the second period of the process the laborer works, 
but his labor being no longer necessary he creates no value for him- 
self. 

He creates surplus-value for the capitalists, which has for 
them all the charms of a creation out of nothing. 

This portion of the working day I name surplus labor-time, 
and to the labor expended during that time I give the name of sur- 
plus labor. 

The rate of surplus-value is an exact expression of the degree 
of exploitation of labor-power by capital, or of the laborer by the 
capitalist. 

The method of calculating the rate of surplus- value is as fol- 
lows: Take the total value of the product, and put the constant cap- 
ital equal to zero. If the amount of surplus- value be given deduct 
it from this remainder to find the variable capital, and if the varia- 
ble capital be given deduct it from the remainder to find the surplus- 
value, then s:v gives us the ratio of the surplus- value to the varia- 
ble capital. 

Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by 
means of an example, to exercise the reader in the application of 
the novel principle underlying it. 

We will take the case of a spinning mill containing 10,000 
mule spindles, spinning No. 2 yarn and producing one pound of yarn 
weekly per spindle. 

Assume the waste to be 6 per cent and 10,600 pounds of cot- 
ton are consumed weekly, at a price of 6 cents per pound, which 
gives us $636 as the cost of raw material. 

The 10,000 spindles, motive power, and all accessories we set 
at $50,000, the wear and tear of which we put at $100 per week, 
rent of building $80 a week, coal, gas, oil and auxiliary materials 
$84 a week. As the total, of constant capital, we have $636, $100, 
$80, $84, or $900. We will assume the variable capital to be $300 a 
week. The price of yarn we will put at 21 cents per pound or a to- 
tal of $1200. The surplus-value is, therefore, $1200 less $900 
constant capital and less the $300 variable or $900, 

Put the constant capital at zero, there remains $1200 as the 
amount of value created weekly. The rate of surplus value is, then, 
as $300 variable is to $900 surplus, or 300 per cent. In a working 
day of eight hours the result is necessary-labor two hours, surplus- 
labor six hours. 



THE WORKING-DAY. 127 



CHAPTER X. THE WORKING-DAY. 

The Limits of the Working Day. 

We started with the supposition that labor-power is bought 
and sold at its value. 

Its value, like that of all other commodities, is determined by 
the working time necessary for its production. 

If the production of the average daily means of subsistence of 
the laborer takes up six hours he must work, on the average, six 
hours every day to produce his daily labor-power, or to reproduce 
the value received as the result of its sale. 

The necessary part of his working-day amounts to six hours, 
and is, other things being equal, a given quantity. 

But with this, the extent of the working-day itself is not 
given. 

To illustrate we will make a line A B representing the neces- 
sary working time— say six hours. 

If the working time be prolonged one, three or six hours be- 
yond B, we have three other lines: 

A B— C working-day I. 

A B C working-day II. 

A B C working-day III. 

Representing three different working-days of 7, 9 and 12 hours. 

The extension BC of the line AB represents the length of 
the surplus labor. 

As the working-day is AB plus BC, or AC, it varies with the 
variable quantity BC. 

Since AB is constant, the ratio of BC to AB can always be 
calculated. 

In working-day I it is one-sixth ; in working-day II it is three- 
sixths ; in working-day III it is six-sixths of AB. 

Since, further, the ratio surplus-working-time to necessary- 
working-time determines the rate of surplus-value, the latter is 
given by the ratio of BC to AB. 

It amounts in the three different working-days, respectively, 
to 16 2-3, 50 and 100 per cent. 

On the other hand, the rate of surplus alone would not give 
us the extent of the working-day. 



128 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



If this rate, for example, wore 100 per cent., the working-day 
might be 8, 10, 12 or more hours. 

It would indicate that the two constituent parts of the work- 
ing-day. necessary-labor and surplus labor-time, were equal in ex- 
tent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts was. 

The working-day is thus not a constant, but a variable, quan- 
tity. 

One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the working-time 
required for the reproduction of the labor-power or the laborer him- 
self. 

But its total amount varies with the duration of the surplus- 
labor. 

The working-day is. therefore, determinable, but is. consid- 
ered by itself, indeterminate. 

Although the working-day is not a fixed, but a fluent quantity, 
it can. on the other hand, only vary within certain limits. 

The minimum limit is. however, not determinable. 

Of course, if we make the extension line BC or the surplus- 
labor - 0. we have a minimum limit ; that is. the part of the day 
which the laborer must work for his own maintenance. 

On the basis of capitalist production, however, this necessary 
labor can form a part only of the working-day ; the working-day 
itself can never be reduced to this minimum. 

On the other hand, the working-day has a maximum limit. 

It cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. 

This maximum limit is conditioned by two things. First, by 
the physical bounds of labor-power— within the 24 hours of the nat- 
ural day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force. 

During part of the day this force must rest, sleep : during 
another part the man has to satisfy other purely physical needs— to 
feed, wash and clothe himself. 

Besides these purely physical limits, the extension of the 
working-day encounter moral ones. 

The laborer needs time to satisfy his intellectual and social 
wants, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the gen- 
eral state of social advancement. 

The variations of the working-day fluctuates, therefore. 
within physical and social bonds. 

But both these limiting conditions are of a very elastic nature, 
and allowing the greatest latitude. 

So we rind working-days of S. 10. 12. 14. 16. IS hours -that is. 
of the most different lengths. 

The capitalist 1 the labor-power at its day-rate. 



THE WORKING-DAY. 129 



To him its use- value belongs during one working-day. 

He has thus acquired the right to make the laborer work for 

him during one day. 

But, what is a working-day? At all events less than a nat- 
ural day. 

By how much ? The capitalist has his own views of this ulti- 
mate limit, the necessary limit of the working-day. 

As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the 
soul of capital. 

But capital has one single life impulse— the tendency to create 
capital and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of 
production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labor. 

Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking 
living labor, and lives the more the more labor it sucks. 

The time the laborer works is the time during which the capi- 
talist consumes the labor-power he has purchased from him. 

If the labor consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs 
the capitalist. 

The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange 
of commodities. 

He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible 
benefit out of the use- value of his commodity. 

Suddenly the voice of the laborer, which has been stifled in 
the storm and stress of the process of production, rises: 

The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd 
of other commodities, in that its use-value creates value, and a value 
greater than its own. 

That is why you bought it. 

That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of 
capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labor-power. 

You and I know on the market only one law— that of the ex- 
change of commodities. 

And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the 
seller who parts with it, but to the buyer who acquires it. 

To you, therefore, belongs the use- value of my daily labor- 
power. 

But by means of the price you pay for it each day I must be 
able to reproduce it daily; and sell it again. 

Apart from natural exhaustion through age, etc. , I must be 
able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, 
health and freshness as to-day. 

You preach to me constantly the gospel of "saving" and "ab- 
stinence." Good! I will, like a sensible, saving owner, husband 



130 CATECHISM OF KARL MAKX's CAPITAL. " 

my solo wealth, labor-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. 

I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action, only as 
much of it as is compatible with its normal duration and healthy 
development. 

By an unlimited extension of the working-day, you may in one 
day use up a quantity of labor-power greater than I can restore in 
three. 

What you gain in labor I lose in substance. 

The use of my labor-power and the spoliation of it are quite 
different things. 

If the average working life of a laborer is 30 years, the value of 
my labor-power, per day, which you pay me for is l-365th multiplied 
by 30, or l-10950tn of its total value. 

But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily l-10950th 
instead of l-3650th of its total value; that is, one-third of its daily 
value, and you rob me. therefore, every day of two-thirds of the val- 
ue of my commodity. 

You pay me for 1 day's labor-power, whilst you use that of 3. 

This is against our contract and the law of exchanges. 

I demand, therefore, a working-day of normal length, and I 
demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters 
sentiment is out of place. 

You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the Odor of Sanc- 
tity to boot, but the thing that you represent face to face with me 
has no heart in its breast. 

That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. 

I demand the normal working-day. because I, like every other 
seller, demand the value of my commodity. 

Note.— During the great strike of the London builders. 1S60- 
61, for the reduction of the working-day to 9 hours, their committee 
published a manifesto that contained, to the same extent, the plea of 
our worker. 

The manifesto alludes, not without irony, to the fact that the 
greatest profit-monger among the building masters, a certain M. 
Petro. was in the Odor of Sanctity. 

We see then that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the 
nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the 
working-day, no limit to the surplus-labor. 

The capitalist maintains his right as purchaser when he tries 
to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make when pos- 
sible two working-days out of one. 

On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold 



THE WORKING-DAY. 131 



implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the laborer 
maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working- 
day to one of definite normal duration. 

There is here, therefore, an antimony, right against right, 
both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. 

Between equal rights force decides. 

Hence is it that, in the history of capitalist production, the de- 
termination of what is a working-day presents itself as a struggle— 
a struggle between collective capital, that is, the capitalist class, and 
collective labor, that is the working class. 

The concept of relative surplus=value. 

That portion of the working-day which merely produces an 
equivalent paid by the capitalist for his labor-power has, up to this 
point, been treated by us as a constant magnitude; and such in fact 
it is, under given conditions of production and at a given stage in 
the economical development of society. 

Beyond this, his necessary labor-time, the laborer, we saw, 
could continue to work for 2, 3, 4, 6, etc. , hours. 

The sate of surplus-value and the length of the working-day 
depended on the magnitude of this prolongation. 

Though the necessary labor-time was constant, we saw, on the 
other hand, that the total working-day was variable. 

Now, suppose we have a working-day whose length, and 
whose apportionment between necessary labor and surplus-labor are 
given. 

Let the whole line, A C, A b c, 

represent, for example, a working-day of 12 hours; the portion of a b 
10 hours of necessary labor, and the portion b c 2 hours of surplus- 
labor. 

How now can the production of surplus-value be increased — 
that is, how can the surplus-labor be prolonged, without, or inde- 
pendently of, any prolongation of a c? 

Although the length of a c is given, b c appears to be capable 
of prolongation, if not by extension beyond its end c, which is also 
the end of the working-day A c, yet at all events, by pushing back 
its starting starting point b in the direction of A. 

Assume that b'— b in the line of a b' b c is equal to half of b c, 
a b' — b c, or to one hour's labor-time. 

If now in a c, the working-day of 12 hours, we move the point 
b to b' be becomes b' c; the surplus-labor increases by one-half, from 
2 hours to 3 hours, although the working-day remains, as before, 12 
hours. 



132 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL. 



This extension of the surplus labor-time from 2 hours to 3 
hours is, however, evidently impossible without a simultaneous con- 
traction of the necessary labor-time from a b into a b' , from 10 hours 
to 9 hours. 

The prolongation of the surplus-labor would correspond to 
shortening of the necessary labor; or a portion of the labor-time 
previously consumed, in reality, for the laborer's own benefit, would 
be converted into labor-time for the benefit of the capitalist. 

There would be an alteration, not in the length of the work- 
ing-day, but in its division into necessary labor-time and surplus 
labor-time. 

On the other hand, it is evident that the duration of the sur- 
plus-labor is given, when the length of the working-day and the 
value of labor-power are given. 

The value of labor-power, that is the labor-time requisite to 
produce labor-power, determines the labor-time necessary for the re- 
production of that value. 

If in one working-hour be embodied 12 cents, and the value of a 
day's labor-power be $1.20, the laborer must work 10 hours a day in 
order to replace the value paid by capital for his labor-power, or to 
produce an equivalent for the value of his daily necessary means of 
subsistence. 

Given the value of these means of subsistence, the value of 
his labor-power is given; and, given the value of his labor-power, 
the duration of his necessary labor-time is given. 

The duration of the surplus-labor, however, is arrived at by 
subtracting the necessary labor-time from the total working-day. 

Ten hours subtracted from 12 leaves 2; and it is not easy to 
see how, under the given conditions, the surplus-labor can possibly 
be prolonged beyond 2 hours. 

No doubt the capitalist can, instead of $1.20, pay the laborer 
$1.08 or even less. 

For the reproduction of this value 9 hours would suffice; and 
consequently 3 hours of surplus-labor, instead of 2, would accrue to 
the capitalist, and the surplus-value would rise from 24 cents to 
36 cents. 

This result, however, would be obtained only by lowering the 
wages of the laborer below the value of his labor-power. 

With the $1.08 which he produced in 9 hours, he commands 
one-tenth less of the necessaries of life than before, and conse- 
quently the proper reproduction of his labor-power is crippled. 

This is where many stop in their investigation of the labor 
problem. 



THE WORKING-DAY. 133 



In consequence of which we find the calamity howler and 
pseudo-socialists on soap boxes haranguing the passersby. 

Telling the workers "that their wages, and also the standard 
of living is continually falling, and that, unless they join the ranks 
to which the 'howler' belongs, the working men of America will 
soon sink to the level of the Asiatic laborer." 

And worse still is their egregious error ' 'that the working 
men refrain from joining their ranks on account of the gross igno- 
rance on the part of the working men." 

The fact of the matter is, that the working men have too high 
an intelligence to be caught by such chaff. 

They know that their wages have continually raised since 
1850, and that the standard of living is much higher than it was in 
the past. 

The conditions stated in a previous chapter, also apply here: 
The conversion of money into capital has to be explained on the 
basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities, in such 
a way that the starting-point is the exchange of equivalents. The 
capitalist must buy his commodities at their value and sell them at 
their value— this includes the commodity, labor-power. 

What must take place in order that we may, without in any 
way violating the law, as above laid down, shorten the necessary 
labor-time? Increase the productiveness of labor. 

The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working- 
day I call absolute surplus-value. 

On the other hand, the surplus-value arising from the cur- 
tailment of the necessary labor-time, and from the corresponding 
alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the 
working-day, I call relative surplus=value. 

In order to effect a fall in the value of labor-power, the in- 
crease in the productiveness of labor must seize upon those branches 
of industry whose products determine the value of labor power, and 
consequently either belong to the class of customary means of sub- 
sistence, or are capable of supplying the place of those means. 

But the value of a commodity is determined not only by the 
quantity of labor which the laborer bestows upon that commodity, 
but also by the labor contained in the means of production. 

For instance, the value of a pair of boots depends, not only 
on the cobbler's labor, but also on the value of the leather, wax, 
thread, etc. 

Hence a fall in the value of labor-power is also brought about 
by an increase in the productiveness of labor, and by a correspond- 
ing cheapening of commodities in those industries which supply the 



134 CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 

instruments of labor and the raw material, that form the elements 
of the constant capital required for producing" the necessaries of life. 

In 1850 the normal working-day was 10 hours, and the ave- 
rage yearly wage was $180. 

The necessary labor was four and eight-tenths hours, and 
surplus-value five and two-tenths hours. 

Since 1850 the productiveness of labor has increased fortv- 
fold. 

Had the standard of living remained constant, the necessary 
labor would now be only one-quarter of an hour. But all our wants, 
both physical and mental, have greatly increased, and, while we 
still have many wants unsatisfied, those that are satisfied are eight- 
fold greater than "those of 1850. 

Hence, the necessary labor today is represented by two hours. 

Our working-day has also been reduced to eight hours. So by 
this it is plainly seen that the statements of our "calamity howler" 
is false, for both wages and the standard of living have greatly in- 
creased. 

But when we consider the ratio between necessary labor and 
surplus-value, we find that the working man has got the ' 'little end 
of the stick." 

For now the rotio is: two hours necessary labor and six hours 
surplus-value. 

Thus, while the wages have risen from $180 to $388 a year, 
and the standard of living increased eight-fold, by the increased pro- 
ductiveness of labor, this increased productiveness of labor has not 
been of as great a benefit to the laborer as to the capitalist. 

The great social discontent arises out of the conditions that 
make for human progress. 

The physical betterment must of necessity precede the higher 
intellectual development. 

The better food, clothing and shelter gives a stronger and 
more highly developed physical organism, to supply energy to a 
more finely developed and intensified brain. 

Being surrounded by more beautiful buildings, parks, art gal- 
leries, conservatories of music, boulevards and gardens, the human 
mind is stimulated, and our desires are greatly increased. 

It is not that our conditions are getting worse, as the "calam- 
ity howler" would make us believe, but that, by our present system 
of production— the capitalist system— our progress is greatly re- 
tarded. 

The intelligent wage-worker recognizes that our captalist sys- 
tem of production was a necessary condition to the progress of the 



THE WORKING-DAY. 135 



human race. In that it socialized the industries, brought about labor- 
saving machinery, and the scientific division of labor, which so greatly 
increased its productiveness. 

When each individual produced by and for himself, and ex- 
changed the product of his labor directly with one other person, his 
instincts were atomic, and his thoughts were always individual, or 
anarchistic. This is shown by his cry of individual liberty, free- 
dom, etc. 

Surrounded only by primitive conditions his horizon of thought 
was very limited. 

But with the socialization of industry it is quite different. 

Like all other systems, the present one holds the germ of its 
own destruction. 

By the bringing together a large number of workers in one 
factory specializing their labor the social instinct is bred. 

For instance, where one man makes a mold, another pours the 
iron, another conveys it to the machine, where another bores it out 
—where one man cuts the bars, another turns up the ends— and 
another presses the car wheels on the axle, and so on till they are 
placed under a car. 

No one of these can think of his own action except by associ- 
ating the action of all the others, whose actions were applied for 
the same end— that of making a car. 

Thus the horizon of his thoughts gains scope until he finds 
that the hat-maker, tailor, weaver, potato digger, in short every 
other worker is but a link in the chain of production, and that every 
person is dependent upon every other person. 

He realizes that, just as each cell of his body is an integral 
part of his organism, every individual member is an integral part 
of the organism society. 

Hence, his every effort is to so conduct himself that all his ac- 
tions will be for the social good, as he realizes that his highest self- 
interest is to work for a more stable and better social fabric. 

As he learns that a healthy body requires that all its members 
should be in a healthy condition, that if one member has a fungus or 
parasitic growth that it draws its substance from, and impoverishes, 
all the rest of the body, and prevents its development. 

That when any member becomes rudimentary, and useless, 
that the sooner it is gone the better it is for the rest of the body. 

So with our body social, every member must be in a healthy 
condition— economically — to have a stable and healthy society. 

We have reached that stage in our economic development 



136 



CATECHISM OF KARL MARX'S "CAPITAL." 



where all production is social, and the only thing compatable with 
social production would be social distribution. 

Therefore the capitalist has become a parasite sucking sur- 
plus-value from the working class without performing any. useful 
service to society. 

And the sooner we lop off (not the man, but the function of) 
the capitalist the better for the welfare of the body politic. 




137 

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138 



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The Theory of 
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A»a Natural Probability of a Reign of Justice 

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